The Eternal Enemy
by SamoaPhoenix9
Summary: On the eve of Casper High graduation, the Ultimate Enemy escapes from Clockwork's tower. Can the team defeat the undefeatable, even with the help of Clockwork's daughter?
1. A Ghost Free Graduation

**Eternal Enemy**

**Chapter 1: A Ghost-Free Graduation**

_Disclaimer: I don't own Danny Phantom or any of its characters._

"Say 'ectoplasm!'"

"Ectoplasm!" sang Samantha Manson and Tucker Foley.

"Wait, Dad, you promised—" Danny Fenton began, as the flashbulb went off in his face. Blinking spots from his vision, Danny shook his head violently, causing the tassel attached to his cap to smack him on the nose.

"You'd think you'd have learned by now nothing will stop your dad's enthusiasm for ghosts, not even when the whole theme of Casper High's graduation is "Ghost-Free,"" Sam pointed out, hands on hips and a gentle smirk on her face. "We have."

Danny glared at his girlfriend of the past three years. "You'd think. What I want to know is, who thought of these stupid tassels? They're nothing but a huge pain." He batted the tassel from his face, only to have momentum work its usual magic as it swung back and hit his nose again.

"They're _tradition_, Danny," Danny's older sister, Jazz, just back from her second year at Harvard, explained. "Caps and gowns like this date back to…oh, never mind," she said as all three nearly-graduates gave her the same 'excuse us while we nap until you're done with the lecture' expression. She changed what she had been going to say to: "It's just for a few hours. Then you don't have to wear one again until you graduate from college."

"College. Thanks, Jazz," Danny grumbled. Yet another reminder of the huge change that was coming at the end of the summer.

Jazz looked hurt. "Sorry, Danny. I was just trying to be helpful."

"I know." Danny gave her a rare smile and hug around the shoulders, though he had to bend down to do it. After spending most of his life as the proverbial runt of the pack, despite the acquisition of superpowered ghost abilities at age fourteen, he had abruptly, and finally, hit his growth spurt just a few months before. Now he felt as though he towered over everyone, including people like Jazz that he'd once had to look up to. Even Dash Baxter, football quarterback and reformed school bully, was several inches shorter than Danny now.

"I, for one, am looking forward to college," Sam said.

"I know, Sam," Danny replied, trying to hide any exasperation. He'd heard this multiple times over the past year.

"Me, too!" Tucker chimed in. "All those college babes ready to see the potential in a techno-geek. Highest-earning potential salary right out of the gate! And, former mayor of a town under my belt. I'll be running the school in no time."

"Sounds like he's been waiting for this moment," Jazz commented, folding her arms.

"He has," Danny and Sam said together, in the same deadpan tone. They laughed and shared a quick kiss, which Jazz and Tucker politely ignored.

"Awww, look, kids," Jack, the Fenton patriarch, exclaimed. He thrust the family digital camera under their noses. "Isn't this cute?"

"We'll remember this day for years to come," agreed Maddie Fenton, Jazz and Danny's mother. "Our little boy's all grown up."

All four young people crowded around to view the digital camera's screen. Sam and Tucker beamed in the picture, but because Danny had been speaking, his mouth was half-open and at an odd angle.

"Can we retake this?" asked Danny.

"No time for that, son! We have to get to the school! Your mother and I in charge of the Ghost Shield!" Jack cried. He sped off to fetch the family RV, otherwise known as the Fenton Assault Vehicle. He reappeared seconds later with a squeal of breaks, honking the horn.

"Come on, kids!" said Maddie, swinging herself into her usual shotgun position.

"Don't worry, Danny," whispered Jazz as they piled into the back of the RV. "We'll get them to take a better one after the ceremony. They'll have forgotten they took the first one if we all deny it."

"Thanks, Jazz," Danny whispered back. He settled back next to Sam and clipped on his seatbelt. He took a deep breath.

Maybe, just maybe, the graduation's "No-Ghost" theme would hold true, and the only ghost present would be his other half, Danny Phantom. Which he would not have to become in order to fight some intruding ghost, as he had at the Casper High prom. Half the decorations had been wrecked, and he'd gotten punch all over himself, before Skulker the ghost-hunting ghost was finally put safely in a Fenton Thermos and ferried back to the Ghost Zone. No one had been too upset; such incidents were par for the course in Amity Park. In fact, their teacher and prom committee head Mr. Lancer had told Danny privately the following day that he and the rest of the committee were happy that it had only been _one _ghost, and only _half _the decorations had been wrecked. They had been bracing themselves for a great deal worse. Everyone was just grateful they had hero Danny Phantom to keep them safe.

How would Danny Phantom fit into life at college? They would all know who he was; saving the world at fourteen tended to get people to remember your face. The days of hiding the connection between Danny Fenton and Danny Phantom were long over, and for the most part he didn't miss them. There were still times when he just wanted to blend in, though. Not enough to give up being Danny Phantom again, but sometimes he did wonder what life would be like if he hadn't had the accident that created Danny Phantom in the first place.

Sam said she knew; she'd been to an alternate universe where Danny's accident had never happened, and that life was downright boring. Danny believed her, but he still pondered at times, like now, about a normal life. Wondered what it would be like to be driving to a normal high school graduation, where the whole spectacle would not be surrounded by a giant green force field built to keep out ghosts.

Sam was right. Bo-ring.

They screeched to a halt outside the school.

"Still standing," Sam muttered. "For now."

"Hey," said Danny. "I just realized that after today it won't be my job to make sure it _keeps_ standing anymore!" He grinned at the thought.

"Feels great, doesn't it?" she said. "We've been _telling _you graduation is a good thing!"

"I guess it is," Danny agreed.

"Ah, there you are, Daniel." Mr. Lancer spotted them and made his way over. "Hello, Mr. and Mrs. Fenton. Mr. Foley. Miss Manson. Jazz, how are you?" This last was with much more enthusiasm. Jazz had always been, and remained, his favorite student despite her relationship to her troublesome brother and parents.

"Just fine, Mr. Lancer," smiled Jazz. "Harvard's psychology program is second to none! They're even letting me get started on my graduate thesis study early."

"Glad to hear it. You can tell me more after the ceremony. For now," he frowned at Danny, "I need to steal your brother away for a few minutes."

"What for?" asked Jazz.

Lancer's eyebrows rose up towards his bald crown. "He didn't tell you? Daniel here has been voted class speaker."

"_What?_" Jazz, Maddie and Jack all yelled at once. Danny blushed brick red and shrank back.

"Yes, everyone wants to hear from the great Danny Phantom one more time before they leave Amity Park for good, or something like that," shrugged Lancer. "That's why I'm here. I need to hear the final draft of your speech before the ceremony starts. Come along, Daniel. Let's get this over with so you can line up with your friends."

Danny followed Lancer, glad of the excuse. Jazz had already rounded on Sam and Tucker. Her "why didn't he tell us?" could be clearly heard even from several yards away.

Leave it to Sam and Tucker to explain. _They_ knew why he hadn't told. His parents would make a huge deal out of it, and probably embarrass him more than they were already planning to when he received his diploma. Jack, particularly, would try to coax him to make obscure references to food throughout. Danny simply hadn't had time to tell Jazz about being the speaker since picking her up from the airport earlier that day. But he'd apologize to her after the ceremony. She knew their parents were overenthusiastic about everything. She'd understand. He hoped.

He read his speech to Lancer; normal, boring graduation things about going out into the world. No mention of ghosts, as promised. His fellow students would be a little disappointed, but he did plan to change his hair and eye color at the end of it while keeping the rest of him normal. He'd been working on controlling his transformation for weeks, which had begun as a quest to try to keep from changing back to human when he was exhausted. He still hadn't managed that yet, but what he had discovered was somewhat useful for the times he _needed_ to show off.

Lancer approved the speech's content and sent Danny out to line up with the rest of the graduates. Since he was the chosen speaker, Danny had to walk up front with the valedictorian instead of in alphabetical order. The good thing about this was that he had a great view of the stage so he could give Sam and Tucker thumbs-up as they went by. The bad part was that if he tripped over his own feet, which he had done in rehearsal, he'd have to go ghost and turn intangible in order to avoid getting trampled.

The strains of "Pomp and Circumstance" suddenly swelled around him. There was no more time for nerves. Clutching his speech notes hidden in the long sleeves of his light blue gown, Danny made his way slowly out onto the football field. Row upon row of chairs was set out, and the bleachers were packed. Over it all pulsed the green glow of the Fentons' Ghost Shield.

A loud horn from the Fenton RV told him his parents had predictably chosen to make as much noise as possible. Danny winced, but also hid a chuckle as he passed Sam's parents, who of course looked scandalized at the racket. Nothing could ever reconcile them to the Fenton family's larger-than-life way of doing everything, though they should have expected it at Danny's graduation.

Luckily, other Amity Park parents spotted their own kids filing onto the field and began to cheer and snap photos as well, so the Fentons were almost drowned out by all the other noise.

Danny took careful, deliberate steps all the way across the field to his own seat. He managed not to trip, though he did catch the edge of one foot on a chair leg. The chair wobbled, but Danny made just the toes of that foot intangible so that they passed right through the offending chair without any more problems. Danny grinned to himself. Even the inconvenience of having very large feet that you weren't used to yet could be reconciled with ghost-powers.

Mr. Lancer rose from his place with the rest of the faculty and made his way to the stage. "Welcome, parents, relatives, friends, and particularly our seniors, to the annual Casper High Graduation ceremony!" he began. "It is the time of year when we say goodbye to yet another group of young people and send them out to make a difference in the world."

Danny paid little attention to the rest of Lancer's welcome. It was the same, word-for-word, as it had been at Jazz's graduation two years previous. Instead he let his eyes wander past the stage.

For a moment his heart leapt, and he almost started out of his seat. Staring at him from the other side of the Ghost Shield were not only Skulker, but his old enemies the Box Ghost, the Lunch Lady, Spectra, Bertrand, and Ember. They were hovering all around, trying to find a way in to disrupt things, but the Ghost Shield was holding easily.

Danny reached for his watch and pressed a certain button—his direct link to Jazz just for this occasion. Jazz had a matching watch that would alert her, and through her, their parents, to leave the safety of the Ghost Shield and chase off any ghosts trying to enter the area around the football field.

Danny watched with envious eyes through the Ghost Shield as his parents and sister began the process of capturing all six ghosts inside Fenton Thermoses. Still, he wished it could be him, as he usually did. But he was the class speaker, and the class speaker didn't jump up and fly off in the middle of the ceremony. Particularly not when…

"…Daniel Fenton!" He snapped back when he heard someone speak his name into the microphone. Everyone in the stadium burst into applause, and Danny realized that the valedictorian had finished her speech and it was his turn.

"Ah!" he cried, leaping to his feet and almost falling again. He caught himself and remembered to take it slow the rest of the way. A ripple of laughter coursed across the sea of graduates and went still. Somehow it was still instinct to laugh first at clumsy Danny Fenton, despite the fact that everyone knew he was the hero Danny Phantom.

Danny took the podium and arranged his notes carefully. He glanced behind him, but Jack, Maddie and Jazz were still fighting. They'd miss his speech. Not a disappointment, though he was sorry Jazz wouldn't hear it. He resolved to give her a private reading back at the house, and turned back to the task at hand. He cleared his throat. Then Dash jumped to his feet and shouted, "You rock, Danny!"

The entire student body leapt up spontaneously and began to cheer. "Dan-ny! Dan-ny!"

Danny felt a smile grow on his face despite the fact that he was used to this kind of adulation, particularly when he left Amity Park for any reason. _This_ was what he'd secretly dreamed about, all those years growing up as the school punching bag. For everyone to be cheering his name at graduation. Even though he usually turned invisible when a crowd of this size started cheering him, childhood dreams die hard. He raised his arms in a gesture of triumph, and the cheers swelled to a roar.

"All right, people, settle down!" Lancer ordered from behind Danny. The vice-principal had whipped out his infamous bullhorn. If they weren't careful, Lancer would start playing his special recording of James Joyce's "Ulysses," and no one wanted to hear more than a few sentences of it. Paragraphs had been known to cause day-long headaches in the entire student body when they failed to obey a command from Lancer's bullhorn the first time.

Slowly, grudgingly, the student body settled back into its seats. Danny waited until they all appeared ready, then tried again. "Ahem. Hello everyone. As most of you probably know, I'm Danny Fen…"

Danny trailed away. A hooded man had stood up from the spectators and was making his way down the main aisle of chairs. The crowd turned to see what had caught their speaker's attention. Mutters and whispers spread around, then died, as the speaker stood at the fifty yard line, still as a statue and without a word.

"Yes?" Danny finally demanded as the silence stretched.

The man laughed, and the hair on the back of Danny's neck prickled. Even after three years, he knew that silky self-satisfied chuckle.

"Why, Daniel, did you think I wouldn't come to see you move on to the next chapter of your life? Or perhaps move you on to the _next_ life—permanently?" The man's voice rose with each word. He tossed aside his hooded cloak with a flourish, revealing a tall, elegant man with blue skin and black hair gelled to look like two bull horns.

Vlad Plasmius was back again.

* * *

_Author's Note: A word from me as we get started. This is not my usual fandom, but the story has been kicking around in my head for...well, let's just say a long, long time. It's also mostly written at this point except for the last chapter so updates will be quite frequent. I wanted to make sure I was fully satisfied before I started offering it for public scrutiny._

_I owe much thanks to Cywyllog for previewing, and to Firefury Amahira for our discussion about her fabulous Dan Plasmius-centered stories and for believing me when I swore I had the idea for this fic long before I read hers (though she probably doesn't remember me)._

_Hope you enjoy,_

_SamoaPhoenix_


	2. Return of the Froot Loop

**Chapter 2: Return of the Froot Loop**

_Disclaimer: I do not own Danny Phantom or any of its characters._

Danny gripped the edges of the podium, willing himself not to jump the gun and change. Not yet, anyway. "Plasmius. Back from space, I see. For three years in a vacuum, you look good. How did you get here?"

"Did you forget, Daniel, that like you I'm half-ghost and can easily pass through the pathetic Fenton Ghost shield?" smirked Plasmius.

Danny rolled his eyes. "How could I? It's not like I didn't spend an _entire_ year with you throwing that in my face every chance you got. I meant, how did you get back from the outer limits? Though it seems like your brain stayed behind."

"Childish insults," snorted Plasmius. "I see you're still attached to them."

Danny growled under his breath but did not rise to the bait.

"As for getting back from space," Plasmius continued, "I could have come back anytime I wanted. I _chose_ to come back today to make certain your humiliation is complete."

"What are you talking about?" Danny demanded.

Plasmius smiled and clicked his fingers. Several cameras attached to floating jet packs rose from concealment among the crowd, all the lenses pointing at Danny.

"These are feeding directly to national news networks. Now, if you reveal your secret, everyone in the world will know the truth…what are you laughing at?"

Danny sighed and shook his head with a pitying smile. "Vlad, you are seriously behind the times. I've been "out" as Danny Phantom since just after the Disasteroid. It was my choice—nobody forced me. Which leaves me free to do…this!"

So speaking, he somersaulted over the podium and into the air, making the full change from Danny Fenton in graduation robes to Danny Phantom in his signature black and white hazmat suit on the way. The tassel managed a final whack on the nose, and he knocked over the podium on the way over—his too-long legs again—but that was the least of his worries. He made sure his eyes were glowing a brilliant green as he looked at Plasmius, a clear challenge.

"Bring it on, Froot Loop!"

For answer, Plasmius sent a red ghost ray beam at him. Danny easily blocked it with a green shield of plasmic energy and bounced the beam right back. He blinked. Three years ago, a direct shot from Plasmius like that would knocked him back in the air a few feet, even if he deflected it cleanly. Now, he'd only felt pressure against his shield. Enough to know it had been a solid hit, but no more.

Back and forth they traded shots, Danny flipping and dodging with an ease that clearly surprised Vlad. Danny wondered why. Had his former arch-rival really expected he had spent the last three years sitting around doing nothing? It wasn't as if Vlad Plasmius had been the only ghost Danny Phantom had ever tangled with, and the others hadn't gone away with Plasmius leaving the scene. Some of them made fighting with his father's old college friend feel like a day at the park.

Still, Vlad had always been stronger than Danny simply by virtue of having greater control over his powers and less scruples about how he used them. The lack of scruples was still there; Danny had throw up barriers to keep Plasmius' misses from hitting humans down below multiple times. As for control—that remained to be seen, but Danny was thus far keeping up with everything Plasmius flung at him.

"What have you been doing with your time, Vlad?" Danny asked as they traded blasts of energy. "Snoozing? Enjoying the vast, empty view? Drawing ectoplasmic smiley faces on the dark side of the moon?"

"Planning, dear boy. Did you think _they_ were a coincidence?" He nodded at Skulker, Spectra, and Ember, who were the only ghosts left of the six the Fentons had originally been fighting.

"_You_ brought them from the Ghost Zone to get my family out of the way?" Danny allowed himself a small snort. "Wait until I tell Jazz that old _Uncle_ Vlad almost made her miss my speech! I wouldn't want to be in your place when I turn her loose on you. She'll either splice you with the Fenton Peeler or forcibly tie you to her psych couch. You'll never be the same again after she's done, either way."

"Jasmine will be the least of my worries once I dispose of you," Plasmius sneered. "And it wasn't hard to persuade a few of your perennial foes to aid me in humiliating you in the most public way possible. They jumped at the chance to have you out of the way permanently."

"You really think you're going to beat me, Vlad? So far things haven't quite gone the way you planned. After all, you thought you'd be fighting helpless Danny _Fenton_, not Danny Phantom. And I haven't gone down yet."

Vlad looked worried for a second, then his smug grin returned. "Do you think _you_ can defeat _me_, Danny _Phantom_? Unless I miss my guess, you're very much unprepared to face down your arch-rival again. If you were, you'd have tried to put me in one of those ridiculous thermos things already."

He did have a point, Danny thought grouchily. He _didn't _have a Fenton Thermos on him. Things could only continue with a stalemate, unless Plasmius was the one to end it. And Danny didn't plan on _that_ happening.

What did he have that Vlad didn't? His Ghostly Wail, but that was a last resort. Since his voice had fully changed to an adult's the Wail at its maximum power tended to destroy everything in its path indiscriminately. He could split into multiple copies of himself, but his largest reliable number was two. Vlad could do at least four and possibly more.

There was always his Ice Beam…

Dodging another ray from his rival, Danny flew straight at Plasmius. Vlad turned and fled, but was hampered by the height of the Ghost Shield dome. Both of them could only go so far in ghost form, and unfortunately Plasmius wasn't stupid enough to change himself back into a human at least a hundred feet in the air. Danny took advantage of Plasmius' momentary indecision of where to go next and grabbed his foe by the ankle. Then he summoned his freezing powers to turn Plasmius into a helpless popsicle trapped in a block of ice. He let go as the block started to fall.

"There. That should—uh-oh."

Plasmius had simply burst the ice using another beam.

"That's an old trick," Vlad sneered. "I've been waiting for you to use that predictable standby. And after three years in space, cold hardly affects me."

Danny bit his lip. There was a major advantage, gone. "Now what, genius?" he muttered to himself.

"No clever quips?" enquired Plasmius sweetly. "Run dry, perhaps?"

_That_ made Danny mad. "Maybe I don't need them to beat you," he snarled. He began firing volley after volley of beams. Caught up in dodging, Plasmius didn't even react until Danny was close enough to grab him by the shirtfront. They were eye to eye, and of an equal height. Danny raised a fist.

"You won't," Plasmius said confidently.

Danny's eyes sparked green, and cold. "You don't know me at all anymore, Vlad." His fist connected with Plasmius' jaw. In addition to his ghostly power, Danny's physical strength had increased a lot over the past three years thanks to workout sessions with human nemesis-turned-fan Dash. The force of the punch sent Plasmius crashing hard into the Ghost Shield. On his way down, Danny seized his rival again and sent him shooting towards the field below, where he landed in a tangle of arms and legs and folding chairs.

"I've learned you have to get physical sometimes, even with ghosts." He paused. "Boy, that came out sounding wrong. Never mind."

"Danny!" A shout from below made him turn. Sam stood there, still in her cap and gown but fully accessorized for ghost fighting with Specter Deflector on her waist and a ray gun in one hand. She heaved something up at him. Danny grinned. He didn't even have to get a good look at the whirling object to know what it was. Of course he could count on his girlfriend—and best friend—to come through in the clutch.

Danny caught the Fenton Thermos easily. He and Sam had had a lot of practice over the years with this throw, and at angles harder than this. Immediately he turned the Thermos on the still-dazed Plasmius and fired. He'd never actually gotten Plasmius inside one before, though he knew his rival was susceptible to them in ghost form because he, Danny, had spent his fair share of time inside them due to various accidents over the years.

The football stadium was suddenly blessedly quiet. Danny swooped down to join Sam on the ground.

"Where did you—" he started.

"You don't want to know," Sam said with an exaggerated shudder.

Danny eyed the Thermos. "Gross. So on the did-not-need-to-know list. I meant, where did you and Tucker go?"

"To help Jazz and your parents, of course. We figured you had things handled here, but we agreed we'd come back in here if it looked like you needed help. I forgot you didn't have a Thermos; you usually do. And for your information, Mr. Sensitive, I was just messing with you." She laughed. "I had the Thermos on my waist under my gown, along with the Specter Deflector. This being our graduation, something had to happen." She glanced at the Thermos, eyebrows up. "Didn't think it'd be _him_, though. I was figuring on Skulker again. Did he say anything?"

"About why he showed up _now_, after three full years of MIA? Apparently, just to humiliate me at my moment of triumph, or something like that. He claims he could have come back from space after the Disasteroid anytime. Not sure I buy it, but no sense in worrying." He gave the Thermos a satisfied shake. "Another one for the Ghost Zone."

"Are you sure that's a good idea?" asked Sam. "This _is_ your arch-rival we're talking about, here."

"Yeah, I know, but Sam…it's different. Somehow. He's not…he hasn't gotten any better than he was three years ago. But I've changed. Instead of him being way above me in power and experience—we were almost equals up there. At least as far as amount of power. He always just used to overwhelm me because I didn't really know what I was doing, and there was nothing I could do about it. This time, it wasn't easy, but it was possible. I've never put him in a Thermos before."

Sam nodded, but she looked worried. "But Danny, this is Vlad Plasmius, practically back from the grave. He might have underestimated you this time because he hasn't seen you for three years, but next time? I wouldn't be too sure."

"Remember how long he's carried a torch for my mom, while completely ignoring the fact that she's not interested? He's not exactly quick on the uptake."

"True." Sam smiled, and shrugged. "I guess you're right. What else can we do with him?"

"Besides give him to my parents to experiment on? Or tear apart molecule by molecule for almost destroying the world and trying for years to destroy their marriage?"

Both shuddered at the thought, and laughed. "I forgot they know about that now," Sam said. "You're right. Things will be different this time around if Vlad's going to be making a nuisance of himself again. Not only are you stronger, but you're not hiding from your parents that you're Danny Phantom. They also know Vlad's evil. You'll have them on your side, plus me and Tucker and Jazz of course."

"I wish there were something else to do besides relegate him to the Ghost Zone like he was any other ghost, but there's not. We could try to put him on trial, or something, but there's no prison that can hold him in the human realm or the Ghost Zone. Not while he's hybrid human-ghost like me."

"Can't we just keep him in here?" Sam asked, tapping the Thermos.

"No, I asked my parents about that once. Apparently the structural integrity runs down after a few years, or something like that, if the ghost is really strong. Mom explained, but she used so much technical language I didn't get it all. I'm pretty sure that's what she meant, though."

"Oh."

"Hey, thanks for coming through with the Thermos, though."

"No problem." Sam reached up to put an arm around his broad shoulders and led him towards the Ghost Shield. "I still can't believe you didn't bring one of your own."

"I guess I was sort of hoping the Ghost Shield would do its job. I was really trying for the "ghost-free" thing." Danny shifted back to Danny Fenton before reaching the Shield, and walked through it.

"I guess I can't blame you." Sam said. "And who'd have expected the only other half-human, half-ghost in the world who hates you to show up?" She glanced around, eyebrows going up as she realized something. "Speaking of half-human half-ghosts that _don't_ hate you, where's Dani? I can't believe I didn't think of her until now."

"The problem with "Cousin" Danielle is I have no idea how to get hold of her reliably. I sent a letter to the last city I know she was in inviting her to my graduation, but for all I know she could be long gone by now. She'll show up when she's ready to save us all from mortal peril again."

"Probably. The hero complex runs deep in the DNA," Sam teased. Danny grunted but did not comment further. The last time Danielle had shown up, a year previously, it was with computer discs of files detailing all the experimenting Vlad had done in order to create her. She'd felt Danny had a right to know. Now that he knew exactly what had been done with his DNA in order to create a stable female clone, the whole thing made Danny decidedly uncomfortable. He might refer to Danielle Phantom as his "cousin," and in a way, she was, but since she had been brought to life from his DNA she was also, in a _very_ twisted sense, his sort-of daughter. The idea of having a daughter who to all appearances was only a few years younger than him was extremely weird. Sam, who had also read the files, along with Tucker and Jazz, dealt with her own feelings about it by teasing him occasionally. Jazz had counseled Danny to let her do it.

"Danny!" Maddie came running up as they approached the Family Assault Vehicle. She crushed her son in a hug. "Hon, are you all right?"

"Yeah, Mom, fine." Danny wriggled free. "I even got Plasmius in a Thermos, for once."

"Hmph." Maddie tapped the Thermos hard with her knuckles. Danny winced, knowing from experience how much that would reverberate inside. "That's for trying to steal me from Jack, and wrecking our son's graduation!"

"Wrecked is right," Mr. Lancer said, coming up to them. "Catch-22, we weren't ready for a ghost assault _inside_ the Ghost Shield."

They all turned to look. Inside the Shield looked like the battle zone it had been. Chairs and stage were all wrecked and smoking.

"Sorry," Danny apologized.

"It's not like the Ghost Shield failed," Jazz pointed out practically. She was still encased in the full-body armor of the Fenton Peeler but had removed the helmet. "We just happened to get attacked by the one evil ghost in the world who can pass through it."

"Thank you, Jasmine, I'm well aware," Lancer replied, his voice weary. "I don't blame your brother for this. We took all the precautions we could under the circumstances, and in the end, no one was hurt. It just means we have to plan and hold graduation _again_."

Danny groaned. "Can't you just mail us our diplomas and pretend we had all the pomp and circumstance?"

"The pomp and circumstance are important, Daniel. There hasn't been a class at Casper High that didn't have a graduation ceremony. And don't you want to give your speech to someone besides me?" He smiled, a knowing look in his small eyes.

Danny clenched his fists, but knew he was beaten. He applauded Lancer for the man's underhandedness. Jazz would never forgive him if he deliberately avoided letting her hear the speech. Particularly since she'd almost missed it once already.

"I guess not," he muttered.

Jazz and Maddie beamed at him. Danny heaved a sigh. "Let's go dump Plasmius in the Ghost Zone."

"We'll have to figure out a way to keep him from interrupting Graduation Take Two," Jazz pointed out.

"You'll have a few days," Lancer informed them as the Fentons, Sam and Tucker piled into the Assault Vehicle. "It will take some time to clean this mess up and get the football field presentable again." He slammed the RV door and waved at them as they pulled away.

The whole party was silent on the way home, except for Jack who was blabbering about his prowess at ghost fighting and speculating about what was for lunch. The rest ignored him, thinking their own thoughts about Plasmius and the ruined graduation.

Once at the Fenton home, they all trooped downstairs to send Vlad and the other captured ghosts to the Ghost Zone. It would likely take them all a few days to find another portal to get back into the human realm.

"With luck, that should do it," Maddie said with satisfaction when all the ghosts had been extracted from the various Thermoses and ejected unceremoniously into the Ghost Zone. "Now, who's hungry?"

"Me! Me!" her husband exclaimed, jumping up and down. They went upstairs, Jack practically skipping at the thought of a meal. Jazz, Tucker and Sam remained, looking at Danny, who was looking at the inactive Fenton Portal to the Ghost Zone.

"You OK, bro?" Tucker asked after a minute.

"He's not going to stay gone." It was a statement, not a question.

All three full humans exchanged glances. "Probably not," Sam and Jazz agreed simultaneously.

"But there's no good worrying about it until it happens," Jazz added wisely. "Come on, I'm starving. Ghost fighting all morning has made me hungry."


	3. Blast From the Past

**Chapter 3: Blast from the Past**

_Disclaimer: I do not own Danny Phantom or any of its characters._

Vlad Plasmius soared through the Ghost Zone, annoyed and bruised. Not only from the beating he'd taken at that blasted Phantom's hands, but also from the second administered by all the other ghosts once they had been released into the Ghost Zone. For their humiliation at the hands of the _human_ ghost-fighters, of course. They hadn't even had a crack at their real enemy, Danny Phantom. Plasmius was strong as ghosts went, but not strong enough to stand against six other ghosts, each with myriad and unique powers.

"It wasn't _my_ fault," Plasmius had whined. "He wasn't supposed to be able to change into Danny Phantom because of my cleverly hidden cameras. It should have been easy to defeat human Danny _Fenton_."

"Oh, stop," growled Skulker. "We agreed to help because we assumed you'd done your scouting beforehand. Surely you realized _some_ things would have changed when you were gone for three years. You completely underestimated the ghost-child." The metal-encased ghost bared his blocky steel teeth. "Or did you also fail to notice he's not a child anymore?"

Vlad had lost his temper and shot a Ghost Ray at Skulker, who of course retaliated. The other ghosts, eager to take their defeat out on someone else, joined in. When Plasmius had been suitably pounded, they flew off to their own pursuits, leaving him to stew in his own pain, rage, and disappointment.

"It _should_ have worked!" he groused aloud. But now he realized the flaw in his plan: he'd been planning for the Danny Phantom he knew from three years previous. Much as it rankled, Skulker was right. He hadn't taken into account the changes the child would go through. Plasmius almost hadn't believed it when he first laid eyes on the boy the school vice principal had introduced as "Daniel Fenton." The short, scrawny kid had metamorphosed into a tall, athletic-looking young man. Plasmius only recognized him by the characteristic spiky dark hair. Still a little clumsy—Plasmius hadn't missed the trip—and not really what he would term a bodybuilder physique, but impressive nonetheless. And not only was he physically strong, but his powers on the ghost side had grown exponentially. If he was being honest with himself, Plasmius had to admit that his advantage of more years as a human-ghost hybrid was rapidly slipping away. Perhaps because the boy had gained his powers at a much younger age, his abilities and strength were developing much more rapidly than Plasmius' ever had. The difference between becoming half-ghost at fourteen rather than twenty-one was striking. If Danny Phantom wasn't stopped soon he might…possibly…_surpass_ Plasmius.

Plasmius growled. _That_ could never be tolerated. Yet he knew he'd have to have a serious tactical advantage before he went near Danny again. Obviously numbers wasn't much help; the boy had his little friends, his too-smart sister, _and _his clueless parents on his side now. Plasmius sighed. Dear Maddie. Years of work wooing her away from Jack Fenton, wasted. Years more work to reverse the damage.

What to do?

Firepower. That's what Plasmius needed more than anything. A force so overwhelming even New Model Danny Phantom couldn't withstand it.

Plasmius glanced around. He was in a part of the Ghost Zone he'd never seen before; but then, that wasn't surprising. He hadn't done a whole lot of exploring of the Zone, just enough to know where to find things that he'd needed to aid his plans in the human world. The Zone itself hadn't interested him much.

This part of the Zone was an island built like an enormous clock tower. Plasmius studied it curiously. He did know that ghostly homes tended to reflect the ghosts that lived in them. A Clock Ghost, perhaps? A little odd, but then, you never could tell with the full-ghosts. The Box Ghost was proof of that.

Plasmius drifted closer to the tower. Nothing flew out to challenge him, which led him to believe no one was home. Ghosts within the Ghost Zone were fairly territorial. If they didn't come out to intercept trespassers to their home ground themselves, they usually set some sort of guard to do so.

As it turned out, the enormous clock face was in fact open to the tower inside. Plasmius flew through it and looked around.

"Hmmm. How interesting."

The inside of the tower seemed to be made up of one large open space, punctuated by cogs, gears, and other myriad internal clock workings. Multiple ticking clocks presented a noise that should have been annoying, but instead was just a pleasant sort of background hum.

Plasmius swooped down to the floor. Still, no one appeared to challenge him. The resident ghost was clearly…well, not in residence.

Whoever this ghost was, Plasmius was not particularly interested in meeting him or her. The place was not really intriguing after a cursory glance. Just clocks ticking. A thing like a scythe leaning against one wall. A weird circular device that looked sort of like an empty picture frame set on a stand in the floor. A…was that a _Fenton Thermos_?

Plasmius shot over to the low shelf. It was indeed a Fenton Thermos, and a very battered one. There were protrusions all over its metal sides, as if whatever was contained within had been fighting to get out. In fact, as Plasmius watched, it rattled a little on the shelf, vibrating like an angry bee.

Well, this _was_ interesting. What was one of these blasted contraptions doing _here_? There was no other sign of Fenton meddling. In fact, the rest of this place no more belonged to a Fenton than it belonged to Vlad himself. Vlad knew the Fentons' designs. The silvery Thermos stood out among all the cogs and whistles because it did _not_ fit in with the tower décor.

So how had it gotten here? Was it the tower's resident ghost, sealed up by Danny Phantom and left here, imprisoned in his own home? Plasmius somehow doubted it. That wasn't the boy's style. He simply dumped any ghost captured through the Fenton Portal and left them to their own devices, as he'd done with Plasmius himself and all the other ghosts from the fiasco today. Unless…

Unless this ghost was too dangerous to be allowed to roam free.

Now _here_ was an idea, and one that might in fact be a solution to Vlad's current predicament of how to get rid of Danny Phantom. Not only would this unknown ghost be very powerful, but likely would also hold a grudge against the one that imprisoned him.

Plasmius picked up the Thermos eagerly. He had no idea how to operate it, but it couldn't be that hard—he'd seen bungling Jack Fenton use one with ease.

As it turned out, it wasn't needed. The very act of picking it up apparently damaged the Thermos's already weak structural integrity beyond repair. The thing split apart in his hands. Steam hissed from it, smelling of rust and something else Plasmius couldn't quite place. Something like lightning, or ozone.

And a laugh. A triumphant laugh came pouring out with the steam and filled the tower. Plasmius squinted, but all he could see through the smoke was something vaguely man-shaped, tall and powerfully built. He had to admit, the former occupant of the Fenton Thermos had a better chilling laugh than Plasmius himself. And it sounded oddly familiar as well. As if it was someone he knew well, but whose name he couldn't quite place.

The mist cleared, and Plasmius couldn't help but step back a pace at the creature that faced him. It was definitely a ghost. The bluish skin, similar to his own in ghost state, proved that beyond doubt. He'd been right about the human shape, and the enormous build. In fact, it was even more impressive now that the mist had cleared. This thing had a body worthy of Schwarzenegger in his prime. Definitely powerful enough to take on Danny Phantom, even the New Model. The current Danny would have to do nothing but lift weights for years in order to obtain this kind of physique.

Speaking of Danny Phantom, the costume this new ghost wore was eerily similar to the boy's. Black and white, with a "DP" on the chest. The ghost had white hair, too, like Phantom in ghost form, but this hair looked less like spikes and a lot more like constantly-rippling flame. The ghost glared at him out of cold red eyes.

Then, surprisingly, the eyebrows went up. "You," said the ghost. Its voice was deep and smooth, like the rumble of a tiger eyeing helpless prey. The eyebrows went down. "How ironic that it would be you." Now Plasmius could hear a slight chuckle in with the dangerous purr.

"You know me?" asked Vlad. "Have we ever met?"

"In a sense. I haven't seen you for at least ten years. Possibly more." The ghost took a step forward, examining Plasmius from top to toe. "How old is Danny Fenton?" he rapped out.

"Seventeen, I believe," answered Plasmius.

"Seventeen. Hmmm." The bigger ghost digested this momentarily. "So he survived."

"Survived what?" Plasmius was feeling more and more lost by the second. "The Disasteroid?"

Up went the eyebrows again. "'Disasteroid?' What a name. No. Something else that never happened, apparently. I smell Clockwork's meddling."

Rather than try to follow these statements, which were getting more and more bizarre, Plasmius asked, "Clockwork?"

"Who do you think owns this place?" the other ghost demanded with a sweep of his hand to indicate the tower. "Me? Of course not. I could never be so tacky. This tower is the home of Clockwork. The Ghost of Time. Don't you…no, of course you don't. If I recall, you were never interested in the more passive breed of ghost."

Startled with this accurate assessment from someone he was sure he'd never laid eyes on before, Plasmius finally burst out, "How do you know me?"

The ghost chuckled, a sound that inadvertently sent shivers up Plasmius' spine. "I know you because I _am_ you. Or was. Part of you, at least."

"_What!_? Explain!"

"It is quite a long story, which I don't have time to tell," the other ghost sighed. "The short version: I am from a time stream that was altered, a future that never was. A future that merged your ghost half with Danny Phantom's ghost half, and created me. I spent ten glorious years destroying both the human world and the Ghost Zone until Clockwork saw fit to interfere. He sent my naïve younger self—the so-called Danny Phantom, not you, of course—to prevent me from ever existing by halting the catalyst of my creation. It appears the catalyst was indeed averted if Danny Phantom survived. The last I saw of him he was about to attempt to save his family and closest friends from a massive explosion at the Nasty Burger. However, Clockwork's plan backfired somewhat."

"In what way?" asked Vlad, still trying to process all of this.

The bigger ghost gave him a condescending look. "I still exist. Apparently outside the time stream." His expression added 'you idiot' to the end of this statement.

Plasmius did not appreciate being talked down to. He stood his tallest, which brought him only an inch or so shorter than the other ghost. "Now just a minute. If you're really made of…of Vlad Plasmius and Danny Phantom, then what happened to human Vlad Masters and Danny Fenton?"

"Masters?" the fire-headed ghost appeared almost thoughtful. "Left him alive. Not sure why, now. I suppose because he was no longer a threat. Danny _Fenton_, however…" His smile became terrible, showing the pointed canines Plasmius recognized from his own ghost form. "He was the work of a few short seconds."

Despite his fear, Vlad bristled at the thought that his human self was not considered a threat, while a teenage boy was worth immediately destroying.

The object of his annoyance, however, ignored Plasmius' glare. "What has happened in the past three years, then?"

"I don't know."

"You don't—" Narrowed eyes. If possible, the silky voice got even more dangerous. "And why not?"

"I've spent the last three years in space. An asteroid made of ectoranium was headed for Earth, and—"

"Ecto-_what_?" the bigger ghost snorted, distracted from his irritation for a moment.

"Don't look at me. I didn't name it. In fact, I suspect the Fentons may have had a hand in the name somehow. In any case it's a rare element that is anti-ghost in nature. I learned _that_ the hard way," grumbled Plasmius. "I had the world in my palm, cowering at my feet, and then I find out I can't make the asteroid intangible. I remained in space, certain that I was to be the last surviving member of my species, when the Earth itself became intangible long enough for the asteroid to pass through harmlessly. I'm not certain how he managed it, but I know Danny Phantom had a hand in it. I decided to remain in space, but eventually I returned to wreak my vengeance. Unfortunately, I missed a few details."

"Such as?"

"Well, for one thing, Danny Phantom has openly made known to the world that he and Danny Fenton are one and the same. I never thought he would have the guts to do it. He has also managed somehow to grow irritatingly strong. He actually had the gall to put me in one of those blasted things!" Plasmius waved at the destroyed Fenton Thermos.

"And threw you into the Ghost Zone, just like any other ghost," finished the other. He nodded. "I see his methods, at least, haven't changed a bit. Toss an enemy into the Ghost Zone knowing full well they'll reappear to challenge him again eventually. An interesting strategy, if one wanted to waste a great deal of time and effort. I prefer a more direct approach." Again that jagged smile.

"Ghosts can't be killed," Plasmius reminded. It felt more like a reassurance to himself than anything else. It was starting to occur to him that this situation might just be beyond his control.

"No, unfortunately. But they can be incapacitated for a much greater length of time than Danny Phantom is ever likely to accomplish."

Plasmius remembered his original purpose in opening the Fenton Thermos. Better to divert this obviously more powerful ghost's thoughts away from himself and towards his intended target. "What about Danny Phantom? Aren't you going to have your revenge for imprisoning you for so many years?"

"An interesting question." The ghost gripped his goateed chin in two fingers, a gesture eerily familiar to Plasmius as it was one of his own favored methods of dastardly plotting. "Eventually, yes. But certain things will have to take place first. After all, even though I am outside the time stream I can't be sure eliminating him won't eliminate me as well. The two of us may still be irritatingly connected."

Plasmius was reassured. This also meant, in theory, that this bizarre version of himself and Danny Phantom couldn't eliminate _him_ as well, for fear of damaging his Vlad Plasmius half.

"Which leaves what to do with you," the other said, as if following his thoughts. Plasmius thought about rocketing away. But where could he go? This ghost had his own ghost-powers combined with those of Danny Phantom. He'd be caught in seconds.

The big ghost rolled his eyes suddenly, looking so much like Danny Phantom Vlad found himself sucking in his breath. This…thing…clearly _was _a manifestation of all that was bad about himself and Danny Phantom. Vlad was only just now beginning to grasp what incredible heights of evil that might mean. He looked at the bizarre hybrid, and was met with a completely pitiless red-eyed stare.

"Of course! This _is_ the Ghost of Time's domain. Why didn't I think of this before? Clockwork has been more helpful than he may ever realize. What a pity he isn't here as well, so I can deal with him for his meddling ways. Which I will, soon enough."

"I—" Vlad started, but was seized by his shirtfront. For the second time that day, he was completely powerless. How was he going to get out of this one? "What are you going to do to me?"

"Just get you out of my way. As you've probably guessed, I can't risk destroying you outright. But you're not of any more use to me, either. You barely know more than I do about this time stream's incarnation of Danny Phantom. What a disappointment. I expected better from my more…evil half."

"Wait! Wait!" cried Plasmius, but his pleas fell on deaf ears. He was lifted off his feet and dragged forcibly to the thing he had taken earlier for an empty picture frame. As they approached, the hybrid held out a hand. The space inside the frame began to glow green. Then it showed a picture, like a TV screen: dinosaurs snarling at one another in a leafy jungle.

"Perfect," said that silky voice, not even a bit strained despite the fact that its owner was hefting all of Plasmius' weight by one arm. That powerful arm shifted, and with a scream Plasmius pitched through the green glowing picture frame and into…somewhere else.

Giant leaves slapped his arms, and his ears echoed with the roars of unknown beasts. And something else: a cruel, gleeful laugh that faded behind him into nothing.

Vlad turned, but there wasn't even a hint of a green glow to mark where the portal had just been.

"Noooo!"

* * *

_Author's Note: Writing from Vlad's perspective for this chapter was pretty tough-getting inside his head is no easy task. Writing _about_ the evil Phantom-Plasmius hybrid from Vlad's perspective when Vlad has no past experience with him was even tougher. Keeping the hybrid from outright destroying Vlad (he's sort of a strong personality and doesn't like anyone telling him what to do, even the intrepid authoress) was the hardest task of all. At the same time, this is admittedly one of my favorite chapters because of the delicate dance of clashing personalities going on._

_I have refrained from giving the hybrid a name, though I know there are several that have been applied to him since Ultimate Enemy aired. If I've done my job right in the upcoming chapters, then you should be able to tell when he's speaking or being referred to. If at any point there's some ambiguity, please let me know. I am striving to be as clear as possible._

_SamoaPhoenix9_


	4. A Strike of the Clock

**Chapter 4: A Strike of the Clock**

_Disclaimer: I do not own Danny Phantom or its characters. Any characters I might have happened to invent, however, belong to me._

Danny and Jazz sat quietly munching breakfast. Jazz had whole-wheat toast, while Danny was chowing down on his second bowl of some overly-sugared cereal he hadn't even bothered to learn the name of.

Jack was in the Op Center, eating pancakes, ham, and fudge (not necessarily in that order and possibly all at once) and tinkering with the Ghost Shield. Maddie was in the lab downstairs, working on some new weapon she hoped could stop Vlad.

Graduation Take One was a day behind them. Tucker and Sam had spent practically the whole rest of the day at the Fentons', trying to work out some way of keeping Vlad Plasmius from wrecking Take Two. Efforts thus far had been unsuccessful; there was no way to keep out _both_ humans and ghosts while allowing humans to enjoy the ceremony. The best they had was making the Fenton Shield completely impenetrable once the crowd and graduates were inside. Modifying the Shield to do so was no small feat. There was also the fact that it put everyone inside at risk of being trapped if something did go wrong. Still, it was all they could come up with that had a hope of working.

"Hey," said Jazz, "I just thought of something."

"Hmmph?" answered Danny around a mouthful of sugar and fiber. He swallowed. "You think of a lot of things. Is this one helpful in any way?"

Jazz glared at him. "Remember that time I ran away to Vlad's?"

"Yeees…" Danny hedged. He did remember, and not with a lot of pleasure, since he had been the cause. "Sorry about that, Jazz."

"Apology accepted, though that wasn't really an attempt to get you to say you're sorry. It _was_ three years ago, and I think we're both adult enough to let it go by now. I mean, do you remember what he did when Skulker brought you in?"

"Of course. He tried to get us to fight each other. Like we needed the help. Though your 'Oh, no! What have I done?' was pretty priceless."

Jazz rolled her eyes. "Like you did any better of an acting job, Mr. Shakespeare. Anyone but Uncle Vlad wouldn't have fallen for it. I mean, he tried to get us to fight using…" Jazz prompted.

"He put you in Dad's Ecto-Skeleton. I just had my powers."

"And how did he keep us from escaping?"

"The Shield!" Danny exclaimed, finally catching on. "He modified it for both ghosts and humans! And put it around his football field! He's done our work for us! So all we have to do…"

"Is go out to Wisconsin and see what we can find," Jazz finished.

"I bet there's enough of it left for us to use. But can we get there and back in time?"

"Sure. If you're driving. And we save some time for the inevitable speeding ticket or two."

"Hilarious, Jazz. I don't drive _that_…OK, maybe I do."

"You had to inherit something from Dad besides the height. You got his lead foot, too. At least you care enough to either swerve or turn the RV intangible when there's somebody in the way."

"What's the point of driving if you can't get where you want to go in a reasonable amount of time?" Danny grumbled.

"This one time—and this is _once_, remember—I am just going to hang on and not say anything about speed laws and how they apply to everyone, including superheroes. I'll tell Mom and Dad what we're doing. You go get the RV."

"Assault vehicle."

"Right. I forgot if I say 'RV' Dad won't know what I mean."

"You need to visit more."

True to her word, Jazz did not bother Danny about speed laws. Nor did she object to occasionally turning intangible to avoid a too-slow pedestrian on a crosswalk. She did clutch a paper bag and mutter "It's better than flying," every once in awhile. Tucker and Sam, strapped into the back seats, were also quiet. Tucker peaceably played "Mortal Death Assault IV" on his PDA, and Sam read a book of dark poetry Danny had gotten her for her birthday.

"How can you two be so calm?" a white-faced Jazz asked, about an hour into the trip.

"You haven't been on a cross-country trip with him when the deadline was our families' lives," answered Tucker without looking up.

"You haven't been to the Ghost Zone with him when we're chasing Vlad down after he stole an all-powerful map," Sam replied at the same time, barely taking her attention from her book.

"Then it's _worse_," they said together.

"Heeey," Danny protested. "I'm not _that_ bad a driver."

"You've gotten way better since you actually took Drivers' Ed," Tucker agreed.

Jazz didn't comment after that.

They arrived at Vlad Masters' former estate in half the time it would have taken had Jazz been driving. Jazz was still a little weak-kneed, but she shook off Danny's offer of a hand to climb down out of the RV.

"I'm fine. Let's do what we came here to do."

They made their way around the castle, which was showing some signs of being the worse for wear. Moss was growing on the stones and ivy strung up one side.

"Looks like he hasn't decided to come back _here_," Sam commented, hands on hips.

"Good thing, too," said Danny. "I don't he'd like us just waltzing up to his house and taking stuff he invented in order to defeat him with it."

"Mom and Dad invented the Shield," Jazz reminded him.

"OK, stuff he stole from us and modified."

The football field was quite overgrown. One of the goal posts had actually fallen over.

"What are we looking for, exactly?" asked Sam.

"Generators that look something like this." Tucker held up his PDA, which projected an image above it of a mechanical device.

"Wow, you've really updated that thing since I last saw it," Jazz said, her eyebrows raised.

"I'm a former mayor and a techno-geek. Always gotta have the latest stuff," Tucker answered proudly. "Comes with the territory."

"How do you even know what these things should look like?" asked Danny as he studied the 3-D image.

"This is one of your parents' generators. I modified the image to look as if Vlad had been tinkering with it." Tucker shrugged. "He has a pretty distinctive style. Technologically speaking. His—"

"OK, OK," interrupted Sam before Tucker could get going. "Enough with the hows and whys. We've got a job to do. Let's go do it. We have to make sure our graduation doesn't get wrecked again, or we'll be doing re-tries all summer until it's time to go off to college."

"You've got a lot more to worry about than that," said a voice from behind the four of them.

"Ghost alert!" Danny cried, blue mist still trailing from his mouth. He jumped in front of the others and stood like a shield, going ghost as he did so. Jazz, Tucker and Sam peered out from behind his tall frame at the intruder.

It was _not_ Vlad. That much was obvious immediately. This ghost was female, unsmiling, slender and fit-looking, with a long ponytail of coppery hair pulled high on her head. Like many ghosts, her skin was blue and her eyes red. Across her left cheek slashed a black mark like a scar that stretched from her nose almost to her ear, marring an otherwise attractive face. She wore calf-length leggings and a cutoff top of a style not unlike the one Sam usually wore, in a deep purple color that clashed horribly with her hair. She also, oddly enough, sported a cape in the same purple hue. Around her neck dangled a pocketwatch set like a pendant in a necklace, and both wrists had cufflike bracelets with watches set into them. In one hand she carried a long staff with a glowing green knob on the top. As they watched, her hair faded to white, and back to red again.

She landed on the grass in front of them, leaning on the staff. "Oh, relax, ghost-kid. I didn't mean you should be worried about _me_. You've got bigger problems. We all do."

"OK, who are you?" Sam demanded.

"And how did you sneak up on us?" Danny wanted to know. "My ghost-sense didn't warn me until you were right on top of us."

"Your ghost-sense didn't warn you because I didn't want it to. You can never be too careful with a job like mine."

"Um, excuse me, what _is_ your job?" asked Jazz from the back of the group.

The ghost fingered her staff. "Think of me as a time cop. I work with—"

"Clockwork." Danny finished for her. He'd finally realized what the color of the cape and jumpsuit, the overabundance of watches, the shifting color of her hair, and the gear-shaped clasp of her cape meant.

"Clockwork?" Jazz repeated. "You've never mentioned him."

"We don't like to be mentioned a lot. The less people know about Clockwork and me and what we do, the less come bugging us about changing stuff in the past. Like _this_ one has, occasionally," the ghost added with a nod at Danny.

"Hey, he meddled with me first," Danny reminded. "And how come I've never seen you around his tower?"

"I told you, I'm a cop. What good is a cop who sits around her office all day? Not much. Clockwork does what you humans would consider 'deskwork'—he keeps an eye on everything and puts together the big picture. He's the captain, if you will. I'm the enforcer." She tapped her staff, much like a human cop would tap her gun.

"With a stick?" asked Tucker, a little too boldly.

"Don't underestimate this thing," the ghost glared. She twisted part of the staff around, and it became a scythe. She twisted it back, then tapped the top. "Time out!"

Sam, and only Sam, was frozen. The ghost tapped the knob on top again, and Sam came to life once more. "Time in! See, that's how it works. I can't stop everything the way Clockwork can, but I'm much more precise." She spun the staff lazily between her fingers. "So. Formal introductions. I'm Clockstrike, Protector of Time, but that's too much of a mouthful. Call me Strike. Of course I already know you four—we've been monitoring you for years." Her face became even more serious, if that was possible. "That's partially why I'm here. I take it you remember your first encounter with Clockwork."

"Of course," Danny answered. "The CAT test and…"

He suddenly felt Sam clutch his arm. "You don't mean…it's _him_? He's back?" she whispered in horror. Danny moved and put his arm around her, drawing her close.

Strike nodded. Tucker sucked in his breath, and Danny felt a general sinking in the pit of his stomach.

"Wait. Who are we talking about?" asked Jazz. "Vlad Plasmius? We already know about him."

"No." Strike shook her head. Her hair went white, and stayed that way. "It was my understanding you had an encounter with this ghost, Jazz. Part of that time was erased by Clockwork, but some of your memories should be intact."

"Let me," said Tucker. He pushed a few buttons on his PDA, and an image appeared above it. It showed a tall, muscular ghost in a jumpsuit similar to Danny in his Phantom guise, but with flaming white hair and a cape. His expression was neutral, almost bored, in the picture, but even in the image there was something dangerous about him. "Remember him now?"

Jazz went even whiter than she had while Danny was driving the RV.

"Ah. I see you _did_ meet him," said Strike. "Most who've had an encounter with this one tend to react like that."

"But that's…that's _evil_ Danny," whispered Jazz. "The one who said he was from the future."

"He is. Or was. But I thought, when I changed what happened by not cheating on the test, he was, well…erased?" Danny asked, turning back to Strike.

"Unfortunately not. Something protected him from erasure. He still exists, outside of time. Which means he no longer ages, or gains greater power. He hasn't gotten any stronger in the past three years. That's some of the precious little _good_ news I have at the moment."

"What happened, exactly?" asked Tucker. "You lose track of the Fenton Thermos, or something?"

"He's gone, that's what happened," snapped Strike. "We had his Fenton Thermos stored in the tower. Clockwork left on business, and of course I wasn't there. When we came back, the Thermos was broken on the floor, and he'd vanished. He's loose somewhere."

The humans and Danny exchanged appalled glances.

"So Vlad and Alternate Evil Danny both are on the loose?" asked Sam after a moment.

"We've located Plasmius; in fact, we think he had something to do with releasing Danny's—and his—alternate self. We found him caught somewhere in the late Jurassic period." Strike's mouth twitched in a small smile. "Your other self is quite effective in dealing with foes. Something I reluctantly admire about him. Needless to say, we didn't want to be dealing with Plasmius,too. We decided to leave him there, at least for now. It's not like he can cause permanent harm to the time stream. Any damage he does will be obliterated at the end of the Cretaceous Period with the rest of the dinosaurs. But that's not important. What's important is that I found you first."

"First? You mean…?" asked Danny.

"That he's after you? Certainly. In fact, you're all in danger, as are Mr. and Mrs. Fenton and your vice principal, a Mr. Lancer." Strike's hair went red again.

"Mr. Lancer? What does he have to do with this?" asked Jazz.

"He—and Mom and Dad, and you and Tucker and Sam—were all supposed to die in the alternate future he comes from. We'll fill you in on the way. We've got to get back home!" Danny was already floating.

"Normally I'd suggest taking a shortcut through our tower, but the fugitive's last-known location was the Ghost Zone. Until I'm certain where he is, nowhere in my realm is safe for you four."

"'Somewhere' in the Ghost Zone? That's not very specific," Sam panted as they sprinted for the RV. "Don't you know? With your, I don't know, ghostly future sight, or something?"

"Clockwork went into one of his mysterious modes, and wouldn't tell me. He sent me to protect you instead." Strike sounded aggravated. "One of the downsides of being Protector instead of Master—_I_ can't see the future. And he operates on a need-to-know basis. You know."

"Yeah," Danny agreed, flying along beside her.

"So you're, what, our personal time-stopping bodyguard now?" wheezed Tucker.

"In a way. I'm also hoping to recapture the prisoner before he causes any harm to this time stream. He did enough damage in his own." Strike fingered her stick, lips pressed together.

They reached the RV. Danny turned intangible long enough to ferry Sam, Tucker and Jazz inside, but then Strike shouted something unintelligible. An explosion set the RV rocking.

"Danny—" Sam gasped.

"Looks like our time just ran out. Get going," Danny ordered.

"But—" Sam started again.

"We'll catch up with you. _Go!_"

Jazz met his gaze with a steely calm he recognized as her battle mode. "See you later, little brother." She moved easily into the driver's seat and turned the ignition.

Her unwavering confidence in him steeled his own nerves at seeing his evil self again. "Later," he agreed.

Then he turned intangible and flew out to face his past. Or his future. He wasn't sure which.


	5. Let's Do the Time Warp Again

**Chapter 5: Let's Do the Time Warp-Again**

_Disclaimer: I don't own Danny Phantom or its characters. Strike, however, belongs to me._

Strike was already in the air. She held her staff in front of her in a fighting stance. As Danny flew away from the fleeing RV to join her, she deflected a blast of green ecto-energy by spinning the staff in a whirling circle. However, she was knocked backwards several feet in the air by the power of the blast.

"Ugh," she grunted as Danny drew level. "Tell your other self to back off."

"Tell him yourself," Danny growled back. "I have no connection with _him_. He's just another ghost to fight." He took a look at his opponent, and gulped. "One who happens to look like me. A lot like me."

When they had first met, the resemblance between fourteen-year-old Danny and his twenty-four-year-old alternate self had been no more than passing. A similar face shape, and some shared expressions. Three years later, with a growth spurt and some muscle mass added on his side, Danny could definitely see something of an eerie mirror image in this other, darker version. The flaming hair, blue skin and cape notwithstanding. Danny put that down to Plasmius' more dramatic influence. He preferred his simple jumpsuit, personally.

His alternate self was studying him just as intently, having broken off the attack for the moment. "So, it's you, is it?" he purred. He crossed his arms. "You're taller than I expected. I was sure you'd stay a runt."

"And you're the same as ever," Danny retorted, crossing his own arms. "Still an annoying jerk who shows up just when he's not wanted."

The other Danny bristled, ever so slightly. He turned to Strike, "And you, Clockstrike. You and Clockwork will both learn you've taken your meddling too far this time."

"What you call 'meddling' is my _job_, Phantom," growled Strike. "If it means keeping you in lockup to prevent atrocities like _your_ time stream, then, well, that's what happens. It's no skin off my nose."

The ghost chuckled. "Well phrased. Couldn't have done better myself."

Strike's expression darkened. Her knuckles tightened on her staff, and she bared her teeth.

"You call him 'Phantom'?" Danny whispered to her. He vaguely remembered Valerie doing the same, on his brief visit to the future. The question also seemed to forestall Strike charging their opponent head-on.

"No offense meant, ghost-kid. What else would you call him?" she demanded.

"Point. I guess."

"If I address you, I'll call you Danny. That OK by you?"

"Sure. As long as we stay alive to call each other anything."

They both turned back to their foe. "What are you going to do now, Phantom?" Strike demanded.

"What, so you can catch me monologing and put me back in one of those ridiculous Thermoses again? Forget it. That's a Technus trick. I've waited three years for this, and I'm not wasting any more time." He began charging a Ghost Ray in one palm.

"Well, it was worth a shot," Strike muttered under her breath, tensing for battle again.

"Look out!" Danny cried. The blast shot forward, and he hurriedly threw up a shield to cover himself and Strike. The shield absorbed the impact, and to Danny it felt like a hammer blow to the skull. He'd forgotten just how powerful his futuristic evil self was. He managed to stay in place in the air—barely.

His opponent raised an eyebrow. The bigger ghost looked mildly impressed in spite of himself. "I see the Cheesehead wasn't kidding when he said you'd gotten stronger. Let's put it to the test, shall we?" He charged another blast.

This time Danny and Strike dodged in opposite directions. Danny charged a blast of his own, while Strike brought out the blade on her staff.

"Oooh, I'm scared now," Danny's evil half sneered.

"It's two against one," Danny reminded him. "You should be."

"Ha! Against the two of you? Please. Come back with an army. Then I might shudder. Just a little. Before I destroy you all." He shot more green Ghost Rays at them.

Strike twisted in the air to dodge the rays. Danny fired his own to deflect the first, which was headed straight for his head, then wove in a tight circle to avoid the rest. He charged and fired another shot, which his other self dodged.

Back and forth they traded energy blows, Danny trying to keep attention on himself so that Strike could get closer with her blade. He knew better than to get within reach of his evil half himself—the bigger ghost could do just as much damage with a fist or a foot as with a Ghost Ray. Danny well remembered what being beaten to within an inch of his life by his alternate self felt like. He had no desire to repeat the experience.

Something was wrong about this. With most of his other usual opponents, if Danny didn't go into a fight with them already knowing what they were up to, then they usually gave some sort of hint during battle. His other self was just attacking him and Strike in an almost casual fashion. Sure, he had dodged the question about his purpose in attacking, but he still had to have one, right?

_He's certifiably insane, _and_ he likes destroying stuff,_ Danny reminded himself as he went intangible to dodge another blow. _Who knows why he's doing this?_

"Revenge, probably," Danny muttered to himself.

"What?" asked Strike as she zoomed by.

"I was just wondering—" Danny paused to fire another Ghost Ray, "—why he's attacking _me_. Even if he exists outside the time stream, killing me could still make _him_ go 'poof.'"

"If you're right, it explains why he sent Plasmius to visit the dinosaurs rather than destroy him," answered Strike, sounding a little breathless. She spun her scythe to block another Ghost Ray.

"Then why's he _here_?"

"Revenge. Like you said."

"Revenge on _you_. He can't take revenge on me without somehow—"

"Returning to the time stream!" they exclaimed together. They looked at each other.

"That was weird," Danny commented. "Usually only Sam and I can do that."

"Look out!" Strike cried. Danny flung up a shield just in time. He angled it this time to bounce his evil self's attack back rather than absorb the blow.

"Take a taste of your own medicine!" he shouted as his opponent had to contort his ghostly body to get out of the way.

"But if he wants to return to the time stream…" Strike mused as she took a second's breather. Suddenly she swore.

"I've had enough of this. _Time out!_" She punched the button on her staff.

Nothing happened.

"Um, wasn't time supposed to stop for him or something?" asked Danny. "'Cause it looks like it hasn't."

Strike pushed the button again to no effect, her face twisting into an angry scowl. The fire-haired ghost began to laugh uproariously.

"Finally decided to test that stupid, _useless_ stick, have you?"

From beneath his jumpsuit, where it had been hanging right beneath the white 'DP' logo, he pulled a gear-shaped medallion.

"A Time Medallion!" Danny exclaimed, recognizing it at once. "Gosh, he's had it ever since he came back to _my_ time to make sure he came into existence. Which means…"

"What it means in practical terms is that I can't freeze him," interrupted Strike. "And he has a _serious_ advantage."

"What I was going to say was, that's probably what protected him from being erased when I chose to do the right thing on the C.A.T. test and changed history."

"Ugh." Strike groaned. "Those things make the wearer immune to anything Clockwork or I do to alter time. Of _course_ he has one. Why would _anything_ about this be easy?"

She sounded so annoyed Danny refrained from asking her why she had expected dealing with his evil alternate self to be simple in any way, shape, or form. He was also surprised. During their brief acquaintance, Strike had given him the impression she was pretty pragmatic.

_SAT word, _he thought triumphantly. _See, Jazz? I did stud…Jazz!_ Suddenly the pieces fell together.

"Oh _no!_ No, no, no, no…how could I be so stupid?"

Hastily, Danny split himself into two. Leaving the copy behind—his copies tended to not be as powerful as the original—he went streaking off in the direction of the RV carrying Sam, Tucker, and Jazz.

Splitting was always a weird experience, though these days he could keep himself split in two for as long as he wanted, and could do up to four if pressed. He was aware of what all copies were doing at the same time. So, as his main part flew over the flat Wisconsin landscape as fast as he could, his copy turned to a still-surprised Strike.

"What is going on?" she demanded.

"This is a diversion!" the Danny-copy snapped.

"What?"

"Didn't we say he wants to return to the time stream so he can have his revenge on me? If he returns to the time stream, then he can destroy me and Plasmius and be the only version of us both. To get back in the time stream, he has to put things the way they were in his reality. You said yourself Mom, Dad, Jazz, Sam, Tucker and Lancer were in danger. That," he pointed at their adversary, "is a copy. He must have split himself and sent an invisible version off after the RV while we were distracted here. We're not the real targets—not yet."

He was lucky it was Strike he was talking to and not his usual companions. Strike clearly understood immediately what he was getting at—presumably she'd had plenty of experience with alternate universe paradoxes. If he had been talking to Sam and Tucker he'd have wasted precious time explaining his conclusions, and how he was all of a sudden so certain he was right. Somehow he just _knew_—call it some remaining connection to the way his alternate self would think—that this was the other Danny's plan.

Their adversary chuckled, a terrible, smug sound, swirled his cloak around himself, vampire-like—and vanished.

Strike snorted. "Ever the dramatic villain." She turned to the Danny-copy. "Go on. I'll catch up with you. You'll need your full power to protect your friends and family—don't waste it on the split."

"Thanks," said copy-Danny. Like his evil counterpart, he ended the copy effect and vanished, his consciousness returning to the original streaking to catch up with the Fenton RV.

Terror prickled at the edge of all of his senses. He hadn't felt this afraid since the leadup to the Disasteroid, when he'd known the fate of the entire world rested on him. In a way, it did again. Losing everyone he cared about would literally end his world. This was a solid fact—losing them in the first place, in that horrifying alternate timeline, was what had transformed him into the monstrosity he was now racing to face. While he knew he wouldn't turn evil because he'd sworn to his family never to do so, even in the event of their deaths, the thought of them actually dead was too awful to contemplate.

"Another SAT word," he muttered to himself. "Please be OK, Jazz. Sam. Tucker."

He almost missed the RV below him—it was facing the wrong direction. The only thing that cued him in was the brilliant green blasts being traded back and forth.

"What the…" Danny muttered as he flew down to join the fray.

His evil half was indeed there. Seeing Danny, he fired off one more blast at the RV, then shot up to head off his opponent out of range of the Assault Vehicle's guns.

"Took you long…" he started to say.

Not for nothing, however, had Danny survived the past three years since their last meeting, and kept his human friends alive as well. He steamed right on past the other ghost to plant himself firmly between the enemy and them. He was also well within weapons range; in order to engage him, the other ghost would have to come in range as well.

For a moment, even his evil self could only gape at this move. Then his expression settled down into disdain. "You rely on _them_ to protect you?" he snorted. "You're weaker than I thought."

Danny was ready for this sort of scorn. "Of _course_ I rely on them," he replied, matching the disdain tone for tone. "They're my _team_. My _family_. And they rely on me, too. That's how it works. I keep them safe, and they watch my butt in return."

"Go Danny!" he heard Sam cheer from below.

"I know what your plan is…Phantom," Danny managed to spit out, though using his own name for someone this evil tasted like acid. "And I won't let you have them. You aren't getting back into the time stream this way. Or any way."

"You can't stop me," the bigger ghost insisted. He made to rocket past Danny.

Danny had anticipated this, however. And on his flight over he had had some time to think about what he could possibly do to keep this monster away from Jazz, Tucker and Sam. As his fire-haired nemesis went by, Danny reached out and grabbed.

He got an ankle. Closer to missing than he wanted, but no point in being picky. The other's momentum carried him down so that the two were screaming towards the RV at impressive speed.

"I think…it's time for you to…_chill out_," Danny snarled. He called upon the coldest ice he could possibly produce, putting as much power as he dared into it.

"Wha…" his evil self had time to gasp before being encased in a solid sheet of ice. The ice dropped towards the RV like a stone. Much as Danny would have liked his opponent to shatter on impact, letting the ice prison fall on the others was not an option. Placing a green Ghost Shield neatly underneath his creation, he flew it to the side of the road and dumped it there.

"Didn't know about that power, did you?" he grinned, dusting off his hands. "I got it after we met. Seems you bonding with Plasmius wasn't such a great thing after all, was it? You never got this one."

"Great job, Danny!" Sam crowed, leaping from the RV to pounce on him.

"Nice going, little brother," added Jazz. She glared at the ghost encased in the ice, hands on hips. He glared right back, red eyes flashing. It was clear that there was little else he could do, however.

"Nice work," added another voice. Strike had finally caught up with them. She floated down to land on top of the RV. "But that won't hold him for long. We have to go!"

"Go _where_?" Tucker demanded from the RV. "According to my PDA calculator, odds are he'll catch us in ten minutes at best."

"On the road," Strike corrected. "But this way buys us more time." She held out a hand. "Time out!" A giant clock hand appeared in the air. It started to spin, until it was a whirl of green.

"A Portal!" exclaimed Danny.

"Get in!" snapped Strike.

"The RV…our parents will…" Jazz started.

"Here!" Danny grabbed Sam and Jazz. Turning intangible, he flew into the RV, tossed them into their seats, and started it up. The moment it roared to life, he stepped hard on the gas pedal, driving it straight into the green.

They entered the familiar greenish darkness of the Ghost Zone. There was a pause, and then the RV seemed to realize there was no road beneath it. After a sickening pause, it dropped like a stone.


	6. All In the Family

**Chapter 6: All In the Family**

_Disclaimer: I do not own Danny Phantom or any of its characters. Strike, however, belongs to me._

"Auuuuuuugh!" Sam, Tucker, and Jazz all screamed as the RV dropped into the endless oblivion of the Ghost Zone.

"Augh!" Danny yelled, for a different reason. He'd dropped through the vehicle to underneath and was now trying to hold it up. It was still hot from the escape, however, and the burning metal components were searing his hands.

Abruptly, the RV stopped its descent. Immediately Danny withdrew his hands and began to blow on them, muttering, "Hot, hot, hot!" Still shaking them, he flew up to see what had happened.

Strike sat on top of the RV, looking smug. She spun her stick lazily in one hand. The knob on the top glowed, showing how the vehicle was managing to stay suspended.

Jazz stuck her head out the driver's window. "Nice move, Strike. For a ghost, you rock."

"Hey, I'm the one who got his hands burned trying to save your behinds," Danny complained.

"It's not that we don't appreciate that, Danny," Jazz added hastily, "It's just that—"

"It was a good thought, don't get me wrong," Strike interrupted. "But sometimes you have to know when brute strength won't get the job done and apply the right tool instead." She spun the stick one more time, then straightened abruptly. "We have to get out of here. It won't take your other self long to come after us. Now would be a _good_ time to apply the brute strength."

"What?" asked Danny.

Strike rolled her eyes. "We're going to have to carry this thing to Clockwork's tower, ghost-kid. You're the one who wanted to bring it along. So unless you have some other brilliant plan on how to get us all there in one piece…"

"Oh." Danny thought hard for a minute. Nothing occurred to him. He flew over to join Strike on top of the RV, taking a firm grip on the front overhang. "Let's go, then."

Strike gave him a nod of approval, a cop to a civilian who has done something right. She went to the back of the RV, also bracing herself to take its weight, albeit with one hand. With the other, she tapped her stick against the RV itself to push the button.

"Time in."

Immediately Danny could feel the weight of the vehicle dragging them down. Straining, he managed to hold up his end and keep them from sinking into the Ghost Zone even further.

"Which way?" he called.

"Left!" ordered Strike. "No, your other left!" she shouted when Danny started to turn. "Not so far! A little right."

"Maybe _you_ should have been in the front," Danny hissed.

"Too late now," Strike growled. "Go!"

"Bossy," Danny muttered under his breath as they started off. He was _Danny Phantom_—it came hard taking orders from anyone these days. Except for Sam—but of course she could order him around. She was his girlfriend, and his best friend before that. From Strike, the constant commands were starting to grate. He liked the female ghost, as much as it's possible to like a cop in her professional capacity. Certainly she was much easier deal with than Walker, the other ghost-cop he knew. She had already proved to be very handy to have around and good in a fight. But he was so used to being his own boss he was having some trouble following her lead.

After that he really didn't have much energy to spare for thinking. Privately, he was glad Dash had designed that workout regimen, and that Sam had talked him into following it. As she pointed out, superpowers were all well and good, but the stronger he was as both human and ghost, the less likely it was that enemies would return for more punishment. Thus far she had been right in more ways than one.

Strike was also surprisingly strong. Danny had yet to feel her waver. He could hear the strain in her voice when she gave directions, so he was reassured it wasn't easy for her either, but she never complained or grumbled despite her initial comment that bringing the RV had been Danny's idea.

At last, Clockwork's tower came into view. Between them Strike and Danny lowered the RV onto the slight patch of ground not taken up by the hulking structure. Danny collapsed and slid down to lean against the vehicle, breathing heavily. Sam popped out of the side door and came immediately to help him up.

"I'm fine," Danny said, trying to shake her off. However, he was too tired to do more than shrug one shoulder.

"Sure," Sam said, ignoring him, as she always did when he overextended himself. She draped one arm over her shoulders and hauled him up.

"You've been working out, too," Danny muttered irrelevantly.

"Never know when it might be useful to be able to carry your boyfriend's weight," Sam replied, managing to put some sarcastic cheer in her voice.

"Ugh," Tucker grumbled from behind them. "Images I do not need just popped into my head from that."

"Not my fault," Sam answered. "I didn't even think that could be considered dirty. Did it sound dirty to you?" she asked Jazz.

"Well, anything can be considered innuendo, from a psychological standpoint. If you—"

"Never mind. Should have realized who I was talking to," interrupted Sam. Danny and even Tucker chuckled as Tucker and Jazz went to help Strike up.

Strike huffed out a sigh once she was on her feet. "Come on."

They made their way into the tower. A hooded figure stood with its back to them, examining a scene in a glowing green frame on a stand. As they approached, the scene faded before Danny could tell what it had been.

The cloaked figure turned. It was Clockwork, Master of Time, clad in his usual purple cloak and carrying his own time staff. At the moment, he was in his young child form, looking like a squat blue five-year-old with red eyes. His staff was much more mechanical than Strike's, complete with gears and knobs.

"Welcome back, Danny, Samantha, Tucker," he said, nodding. "Jasmine. Nice to meet you in person. I take it my daughter has already explained who I am."

"Y—wait, _daughter_?"

"_Daughter_?" Danny, Sam and Tucker repeated.

"_Dad_," growled Strike. "I thought we agreed we were going to keep things _professional_?" If she hadn't been a cop, Danny thought he might have heard a hint of a whine in her voice. He and Jazz exchanged looks over Sam's shoulder. Both of them had used that tone enough with their own parents to confirm that Clockwork and Clockstrike were indeed father and daughter.

For his part, Clockwork gave Strike his characteristic tiny, secretive smile, showing off his baby teeth. "Very well, Enforcer. I'd ask what these four are doing here, but of course I already know. I will say you can't be here for very long."

"We figured out what his plan is," Danny said. "He wants to kill everyone who was supposed to die in the explosion three years ago so he can get back in the time stream. Then he'll kill me and Plasmius, since he won't need us around to exist anymore."

"He has the laws of the universe on his side on that one," Clockwork said.

"How do you mean?" asked Jazz.

Clockwork shrugged. "The universe has certain…preferences, shall we say. You call them laws; I call them guidelines. One of these 'guidelines' states that there cannot be two of one thing in existence at the same time. If something like that occurs because of an altered time stream, then things always transpire so that the versions continue to meet until one is destroyed or otherwise removed from the timestream. These meetings of Plasmius and Phantom, and Danny and Phantom, were fated to happen at some point so long as Phantom remains in this time stream. Phantom unknowingly removed one of his greatest threats by sending Plasmius back in time."

"So…wait." Danny's brain seemed to be moving at half its usual rate. "What you're saying is that he…and I…will keep meeting up until one of us…"

"Eliminates the other, correct." Clockwork aged to his adult form as he spoke. Now he looked like a man a little older than Strike.

"Wait," said Tucker. "So Danny, or somebody else, somehow has to kill…_him_? Or they'll keep meeting until one of them dies?"

"Or is removed from this time stream." Clockwork nodded.

"Oh, man. And how are we supposed to do _that_?" Danny demanded.

"The other choice is to get eliminated yourself, so that _he's_ the only version of Danny Phantom. Of course the Enforcer and I would like to prevent that scenario. However, we're both at a serious disadvantage as long as Phantom has a Time Medallion. None of our time-manipulation powers will work on him."

"So our first job is to get it off him. Then what?" asked Jazz.

"He may vanish," Strike put in. She was leaning against the wall, arms crossed. "We've never had a scenario like this before with the Time Medallions. Usually, taking one off while in a time period other than your own will return you to your original time. However, because his time stream no longer exists, he may also simply cease to exist. If not, then at least we have the advantage of being able to use time manipulation on him again. That might be enough for us to stop him."

"One question: why are you two so invested in this?" asked Jazz. "And why do you want us to win? Most ghosts would love to see Danny Phantom eliminated for good."

"This Danny Phantom is the better of the two alternatives." Strike replied matter-of-factly. "Believe me, we know."

"Thanks," Danny muttered.

"We're also responsible," Clockwork elaborated. "It's the price of meddling in time. It falls to us to fix any holes or anomalies we create, however inadvertently."

"But how are you—"

"Long story, Jazz. We'll fill you in on all the parts you missed later," Danny interrupted.

"Yeah. Right now we need a plan to get that medallion off the other Danny so we can beat him back to where he came from," agreed Sam.

"That means getting back to the human realm so we can protect Mom, Dad and Lancer," said Danny.

"Easy, from here." Clockwork gestured at his window. "This can return you whenever and wherever you want."

"Clockwork, I can do it," Strike said. "They brought that Fenton Vehicle."

"The time window has handled worse."

Strike narrowed her eyes. "I'm _fine_, Dad."

Clockwork only regarded his daughter for a moment out of suddenly mild red eyes. He transformed into an old man as they watched. Strike glared, then deflated angrily. Her hair went white, then red again. "Fine. We'll take the window."

"That's my girl," Clockwork said fondly.

"Hrmph," growled Strike. She went back out, slamming the front door behind her.

Clockwork shook his head. "Kids."

"She's hardly a kid," Sam pointed out. Danny knew she sympathized with anyone who had a frictional relationship with their parents. "To hear her talk, she's been around the block a little. Unless she made that up?"

"She didn't. She's been on many, many successful missions in her relatively short existence. But, as you may discover if you survive this little adventure, no matter how old your children get, for you, they never grow up."

Sam flushed and looked away from Danny, despite having Danny still draped over her shoulder. Danny felt his own face heating up. They'd been dating for years, and quite happily, but they had never discussed such permanent things as marriage and…children. That seemed years away. Years and years and years. Danny forcibly shoved the thought aside before his mind started spiraling away from their current mission. If his alternate self got his way, there would _be_ no future for any of them to contemplate.

"I'll go get the RV," he said.

Clockwork shot him a smug look, as if he knew he'd caused Danny discomfort. Danny glared at him as he left.

He found Strike leaning against the Fenton RV waiting for him. "I take it he said something disconcerting so you felt compelled to come out here," she said.

"How'd you know?"

"It's his way of reminding us all he knows _everything_." Strike rolled her eyes.

"Like a parade from above."

"So he used that one on you. He's got lots of other metaphors for how he sees time. He waxes most mysterious in the middle of a crisis. C'mon, let's get back to your house before he gives us all a headache."

Between the two of them they shoved the RV whole through the walls of the tower as if it were intangible—Danny and his friends had long since discovered that real-world objects could do that in the Ghost Zone. He and Strike followed it using the door.

Danny did his best impression of a train whistle. "All aboard. Next stop, FentonWorks."

"How cute," growled Strike. "Can we dispense with the childish antics and focus, please?"

Danny, about to feel embarrassed, was pleased to see Sam, Tucker, and even Jazz glare at the female ghost.

"Making light of a situation when one is about to embark into potential danger is a perfectly natural and healthy response. It relieves the pressure of one's own looming mortality," Jazz announced in her most haughty psycho-babble tone.

"Yeah, what she said," Tucker seconded. "Whatever it was she just said."

"You don't like the Phantom sense of humor, you either deal or you don't come. We can protect ourselves pretty well without you," declared Sam, crossing her arms.

"Guys," Danny said, taking pity on the bristling Strike despite the fact that she was the one who had insulted him. "Thanks, I appreciate the support, but it's fine. You're cool, right?" he added to Strike.

She gave a curt nod.

"But, Danny—" Sam began, obviously still angry about something. Danny shot her a look that said _Not now_. Sam went quiet, though her face still remained thunderously dark.

"Let's get going," Danny said. The others piled into the RV. Danny leaned up subtly behind his girlfriend and whispered, "Don't make her look bad in front of her dad."

"Oh! Right." Sam relaxed a little, looking abashed.

"Not everyone likes the Phantom sense of humor the way you do. But thanks for the defense."

"Always." Sam kissed his cheek and clambered into the RV beside Tucker.

Danny turned to Strike. Her scarred face was expressionless. "Shall we?"

"Let's rock," Danny agreed.

"I'll contact you if I need to," Clockwork said.

"He's immune to our powers, Dad," Strike reminded from behind Danny. "Be careful."

Clockwork gave a small smile. "I know. I will."

Jazz started the RV. Danny and Strike flew to lift it up to the window. Clockwork twirled his staff, and the pulsating green circle grew to accommodate the RV's size.

"Whoa, cool," Danny managed before straining with all his might to move the RV and its passengers through the now-enormous hoop.

Just as they went through, he realized he had no idea where they were going to end up. Yes, he presumed Clockwork was sending them back to FentonWorks, but where was the Master of Time going to put them? Outside the house itself? _Inside_ the house, in front of the Ghost Portal? The edge of Amity Park? Or—gulp—the air _over_ the town?

He took a firmer grip on the RV.


	7. What We Need is a Plan

**Chapter 7: What We Need Is a Plan**

_Disclaimer: I do not own Danny Phantom or any of its characters or plot devices. Original ideas belong to me._

"Auuuugh!" screamed the RV's occupants as the RV dropped into oblivion again. Then: "Oof!" The RV settled to the road in front of FentonWorks with a heavy thud.

"Jeez, guys," Danny said, flying around to peer in one of the front windows. "You only fell, like, five feet."

The driver door flew open, smashing Danny in the face. It was his turn to say, "Oof!" as he lurched back several feet in the air.

"Sorry!" Jazz cried, her voice a little hoarse. "But twice in one day of going through portals and then falling—it's too much!"

"It's OK," Danny answered, rubbing his face.

"Maybe we _did_ overreact a little," Tucker admitted. "But after the first time—"

"It's like a roller coaster," Sam said cheerfully as she clambered out behind Tucker. "You know it's good when you scream just as loud the second time."

"Some roller coaster," grumbled Jazz. "I prefer them fully regulated and following all International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions safety rules, thank you."

"We'll keep that in mind for next time, Jazz," Danny replied with a roll of his eyes.

"Dude, with any luck there won't _be_ a next time," Tucker pointed out. "I'd rather avoid spending the rest of our lives running from your evil alternative self."

"We won't be running for long," Strike said. She had perched herself on top of the RV and was lazily spinning her staff between her fingers. Her hair went white, then red again. "We just have to figure out the best way to get the medallion away from him. Then he'll see a thing or two."

An ecto-blast hitting the sidewalk made them all start. Danny and Strike moved into fighting positions, while the full-humans either reached for weapons or dove for cover, according to their natures.

"How'd he find us?" Tucker wailed from behind a trash can.

"He didn't," Danny said, though he didn't relax. "What do you want?" he demanded irritably of the specter now facing the group. "I've got bigger fish to fry—or in your case, bigger round things to put you in."

"THE BOX GHOST DOES NOT WISH TO GO INTO YOUR SHINY CYLINDRICAL CONTAINER!" the Box Ghost yelled. "FOR HE IS THE MASTER OF ALL THINGS CORRUGATED AND SQUARE!"

"And we've heard this how many times before now?" Sam asked, one hand on a hip.

"Thirty-seven over the past three years," Tucker announced, consulting his PDA.

"Why do you keep track of these things?" Strike rolled her eyes.

"An idea Tucker and I came up with before I went to Harvard," Jazz explained. "We wanted to see when there was any documentable deviations from any of the patterns of the ghosts Danny regularly faces. He sends me the data monthly, and I store it on a database on my computer. Any behavioral deviations from a specimen like this one means things have reached an apocalyptic level on the scale of 'not good.'"

"Glad to know we haven't reached 'apocalyptic' on the 'not good' scale yet," harrumphed Strike. "Are we going to get rid of him or not?"

"'We?' You're going to help?" asked Danny.

"Expedites things," Strike said shortly. "We've already wasted enough time on this chunk of ectoplasm. Just get out your Thermos. I'll do the rest."

"OK," Jazz said, pulling out her own Thermos. Strike hit the button on her staff, and the Box Ghost froze in the act of opening his mouth to yell at them again.

"Good timing," Tucker commented.

Strike quirked an eyebrow. "Always."

Jazz activated the Thermos and sucked the Box Ghost inside with little fanfare. The three humans and Danny stared at the Thermos.

"Dude," Tucker finally announced, "I wish all our snags were that easy."

"Doesn't seem fair somehow," Danny agreed.

"You do your job, we do ours," Strike said. "Clockwork and I handle things to do with the timestream. You handle issues that come up between the Ghost Zone and the human realm. Different tools for different jobs. Really, I've sometimes envied you get to work as a team. You're far more effective than any one of you would be alone. Mostly Dad and I toil in our own separate spheres." She twirled her staff. "Why are we standing around here jawing? We need a plan, and we need one fast. It won't take the fire-haired egomaniac long to figure out where we went."

Obediently they all trooped downstairs to let the Box Ghost back into the Ghost Zone for the second time in two days. Danny, about to connect the Fenton Thermos to its special holder next to the Portal, paused a moment and looked at the Thermos.

"Wait a second, guys. There's something that has to be done." He glanced at Strike. "Get ready to freeze him again if he starts to cause problems."

"Danny, what are you doing?" demanded Sam. "You can't let him out in here!"

"I have to. Listen," he said when Tucker, Sam and Jazz all opened their mouths. "You didn't see it in…the other future. _He_ did all kinds of horrible stuff to the ghosts as well as to the human world. They were angry enough to try and take me out even though I wasn't responsible for any of it. I should at least try to warn them." He pressed the button to open the Thermos.

Out poured the Box Ghost. "I AM THE…" He paused when he saw the five of them just looking at him, though Strike had her finger over the button on her staff. "The Box Ghost is confused," he said, for once not yelling at the top of his lungs. "Why have you not forced him back into the Ghost Zone as usual?"

"Look, we need to tell you something," Danny said. "It's kind of important you warn the others back in the Ghost Zone."

The Box Ghost looked suspicious and didn't say anything.

"I know we've had our…differences," stumbled Danny. "But the last time I asked for help from all of you, I had your best interests at heart as well as those of the human realm. I promise it's that type of emergency again."

The Box Ghost jumped up in the air. Strike's finger twitched, then relaxed.

"WHAT SORT OF CALAMATOUS EVENT?" the Box Ghost demanded.

"Keep it down, will you?" Danny crossed his arms. "You don't want my parents down here. You've seen them. They're the shoot first, ask questions later type when it comes to ghosts. This is just between us."

The Box Ghost deflated noisily, but he nodded.

"All right. There's an evil ghost that just got loose. In the alternate timeline he comes from, he hurt you and the others in the Ghost Zone. Badly. I saw it. You were missing a hand, and an eye, and goodness knows what else. Johnny 13 was paralyzed and in a wheelchair. Ember couldn't sing anymore. Need I go on?"

The Box Ghost clutched at one wrist nervously and shook his head. Even the humans were staring at Danny. He'd never told them all of the details he'd seen in that nightmare future.

"I don't want that to happen again. This guy…he lives for hurting anyone and anything that crosses his path. He's in the human realm right now, we think, but he can make his own portals between my world and the Ghost Zone so he could be anywhere right now. Go back and tell everyone to lay low for awhile. Most of the action should be in the human realm—all the people we _think_ are his targets are here. Except maybe for Clockwork. Anyway, it's important there are as few crossings as possible from the Ghost Zone into the human realm for awhile. And if anybody encounters this guy, just get out of his way. Can you pass that on?"

"Yes," the Box Ghost agreed. "What does this rampaging menace look like, so that the Box Ghost may inform his fellow ghosts?"

"He…uh…" Danny blushed.

"He kinda looks like him," Tucker said helpfully, gesturing to Danny.

"Only older," said Jazz.

"And bigger," added Sam.

"And wearing a cape," was Tucker's final contribution. "Oh, and his hair's on fire."

"And he's also about ten times more powerful," Danny admitted.

"Those are the important things," Jazz finished cheerfully.

The Box Ghost's eyes had been going wider and wider at each added description. "The prisoner in Clockwork's tower," he whispered. "The Box Ghost has heard rumors that a powerful ghost from another timeline was being kept there. No one wished to see if they were true."

"They're all true. And probably worse than you've heard," Strike said, speaking for the first time since the Box Ghost's release.

"THE BOX GHOST WILL WARN HIS FELLOW DWELLERS OF THE ECTOPLASMIC REALM!" the Box Ghost bellowed. "OPEN THE MECHANICAL GATE SO THAT HE MAY RETURN!"

Obligingly, Danny activated the Fenton Portal. The Box Ghost passed into the swirling green mist like a shot, and not a moment too soon. Jack and Maddie came rushing down the stairs, weapons drawn.

"We thought we heard the Box Ghost down here!" panted Maddie.

"Uhh…" said Danny. "He was here. But we…took care of him. Back in the Ghost Zone, where he belongs."

"Oh, good," sighed Maddie. "Sweetie, we know you can handle things like that, but call us next time there's a ghost in the lab, OK? I've got some things in here ghosts shouldn't get their hands on."

"Really? Like what?" asked Jack suggestively. Danny and Jazz both concealed gags.

"Daaad," complained Danny. "Gross. Not in front of us."

"Another ghost!" Maddie turned her gun on Strike, who twirled her staff into a fighting stance.

"Chaaarge!" yelled Jack. He ran at Strike, his own weapon poised.

"Dad, wait!" Jazz called. "Don't—"

Strike tapped the button on her staff, and Jack was frozen.

"What are you doing to my husband, you fiend?" screamed Maddie, charging her gun. She fired, but Danny flew between them and put up a Ghost Shield to absorb the shot.

"Whoa! Guys! Time out!" he yelled.

"Hey, that's my line," Strike commented from behind him. She alone of the group seemed unfazed by all the activity, even though she was the one under attack.

"Not helping," Danny told her. "Look, Mom, this is Strike. She's on our side."

"Oh." Maddie lowered her weapon. "Well, why didn't you say so in the first place?"

"Um, Mom…" Danny mimed shooting at Strike.

"Right, sorry." Maddie flushed. "Old habits die hard I guess. We tend to forget there are _some_ good ghosts out there. Welcome to our lab."

"Nice to see the Fentons are all on their toes," said Strike. She pushed the button to unfreeze Jack. Then she calmly moved out of the way as he went crashing into the wall.

"Pass the fudge," he muttered as he staggered away. Sam and Tucker caught his arms and steadied him until he stopped bobbing and weaving.

"Dad," said Danny. "This is Strike. She's here to protect us."

"Protect us from what?" asked Maddie, hands on hips. "We handled Vlad just fine the other day."

"Not Vlad," said Sam.

"Much, much worse," added Tucker.

"Worse?" Jack asked woozily.

"_Way_ worse," Danny assured him. "Remember when…oh, no, you don't remember. Crap. That makes it harder."

"Remember what?" demanded Maddie.

Danny sighed. "Stuff that happened in an alternate timeline that got erased. Oh, boy. OK. Remember when I almost cheated on the C.A.T test but Mr. Lancer gave me another chance to take it?"

"I think so," said Maddie.

"Not really," said Jack scratching his head.

"Anyway, there was a lot more to it than that. Tucker, Sam, Jazz and I got a small taste of what life would have been like had I cheated on that test. Namely, that you all would die in a horrible explosion and I would turn into the most evil, powerful ghost the world has ever seen. Worse than Vlad. Part Vlad, in fact—my ghost half and his merged through a process I don't want to talk about."

"You?" Maddie exclaimed. "I can't see our little boy turning into that."

"I won't!" Danny insisted. "I promised I wouldn't, even if something does happen to you guys."

"But you'll probably get the chance to meet the potential result soon," said Strike. "He's on his way."

"He…wait. Are you telling me that version of Danny and Vlad…"

"Still exists? Yes," said Strike before Danny could open his mouth. "He came to this timeline three years ago, once Danny here was aware of his existence, to try to make certain the circumstances that created him happened again."

"To make sure he came into being," Jazz translated.

"Exactly. Danny managed to trap him in one of your Fenton Thermoses, and my father Clockwork made certain everything else worked out. Danny got his second chance on the test, and the rest of you—except for Danny's two human friends and his sister—never remembered meeting Danny's alternate self. The only problem was that alternate form still existed in this time stream. My father agreed to take charge of him. Only now—"

"He's loose," finished Maddie.

"Hit it on the head," nodded Strike.

"Why do we need protection?" asked Jack. "Let him come. It's the next best thing to having a good crack at ol' Vladdy again for trying to steal my wife."

Maddie had been watching her children's reactions to this. "Why exactly do you think he's after us? He must have more important people to attack first."

"He wants to return to the time stream," Strike explained. "To do that, he will have to make things as they were when he was created. He must eliminate you, your husband, Sam, Tucker, Jazz, and Mr. Lancer. Then, and only then, can he get rid of Danny without risking his own existential integrity."

"Huh?" was Jack's response to this.

"He has to kill us all; then he can kill Danny and become the only version of Danny Phantom," Jazz explained.

"Oh. Of course I knew that," Jack huffed.

"Do we have a plan?" asked Maddie.

"Other than not die? Not really," said Tucker with a shrug.

"We still have to try and get the Time Medallion off him," Strike pointed out. "That might solve our problem, since he no longer has a time period to snap back to."

"Time Medallion?" Maddie's interest was clearly piqued.

"He's got it around his neck. It's the reason he didn't vanish when Danny didn't turn evil—it makes him immune to any time manipulation."

Maddie looked thoughtful. "Hmm. That is an important advantage for him. Any ideas on how to get it off?"

"We'd have to somehow get close enough," Sam noted. "Not an easy thing to do with an insanely powerful ghost like him. And since he remembers being human, he uses physical attacks_ and _his ghost powers."

"We could all jump 'im," suggested Jack. "Don't think he can take all of us at once!"

"He'd have us wrapped in ectoplasm and tied to something explosive before we could scream," Sam said gloomily. "That's what happened _last_ time, according to Danny. We don't remember that part of it, luckily."

"We're more experienced than we were back then," Tucker said, though he didn't sound very confident. "I mean, a lot of stuff's happened. We've saved the world a few times, and all. Danny's gotten more powerful, we have another ghost on our side, we'd all be armed, and there are more of us. And we know he's coming. It could work if we were all here and planned an ambush."

"Yeah, maybe," agreed Danny. "If we all work together…" He trailed off thoughtfully.

"That's the best plan the great Fenton Family and Company can come up with?" scoffed Strike. "Hide here and ambush one of the most destructive ghosts ever to exist? You'd be lucky if this whole block wasn't leveled in three seconds flat. Five seconds, tops."

"You got something better?" Danny demanded.

"I might," said Jazz from a corner of the lab. Unnoticed while everyone was arguing she'd gone off and started scanning the ghost database she and Tucker had developed. The whole room turned to look at her.

"What?" they all said at once.

Jazz grinned. "Are those Time Medallion thingys metal?"


	8. Mission Impossible

**Chapter 8: Mission Impossible**

_Disclaimer: I do not own Danny Phantom or its characters. Original ideas and characters, however, are mine._

"'Thingys'?" Danny repeated. "I thought adolescent slang terms were a thing of the past for you."

"I'm still in touch with my inner teenager," Jazz replied loftily.

Danny did a facepalm. "What next? Your inner twentysomething that doesn't exist yet?"

"I'm working on that," said Jazz. "I repeat, are the Time Medallions metal?"

"It's a metal alloy you don't have in this time period yet, but yes, they're metal," Strike finally answered.

"Magnetic?"

Strike looked surprised, then thoughtful. "I think so."

"Can you get one so we can test it?"

"Easily." Strike tweaked something on her right wristband. From a thin compartment slid a rounded object very familiar to Danny, Sam and Tucker. "We're never without at least one," Strike explained as she tossed it to Jazz, who caught the medallion easily. "You never know when it might come in handy. Well, Clockwork knows, but he's hardly ever in a telling mood. At this point it's just habit for me."

Jazz held a magnet in one hand and the medallion in the other. Nothing happened. She moved them closer together. Still nothing. Finally when they were nearly touching the medallion scooted a fraction of an inch across her palm towards the magnet.

"Not very strong magnetic properties," observed Jazz. "Still, it should be enough."

"Enough for what?" Tucker wanted to know.

"Care to enlighten us?" Danny added.

Jazz smiled.

-0-0-0-

"And we really think Technus will cooperate?" Tucker asked for the thousandth time since the plan had been explained.

"Him double-crossing us is a definite possibility," Jazz reminded him. "We're hoping he'll see it's in his best interest to cooperate until we've got Danny's evil self under permanent control or better yet, neutralized completely. Then he can double-cross us to his ghostly heart's content."

They had been arguing this out for at least an hour and a half and the tension was still escalating. Danny could tell the waiting was getting to everyone. Knowing something bad could happen at any second was starting to wear on even Jazz's usual upbeat attitude. Jack had long since removed himself from the conversation and was chowing down on an enormous sandwich in one corner of the lab. Maddie was tinkering with some device while she listened to the argument with half an ear for new developments. Strike had gone to the Ghost Zone to persuade Technus to help them and bring him back to the lab hidden in an old laptop computer donated for the cause by Tucker. The Wi-Fi device in it was busted, which was the only reason Tucker had consented to its use. That way Technus couldn't escape using Wi-Fi into any of the other lab systems or nearby networks.

Jazz, Tucker and Sam were still arguing the same points of the plan over and over again while Danny tried to keep the peace. After several years of working together normally the four of them got along well, but the stress had turned them all back into the bickering teenagers they'd been at the beginning. He could see Sam in particular was only minutes away from exploding.

Taking her hand in his, he asked, "Anyone mind if Sam and I go for a short walk?"

Everyone swung around to look at him.

"Are you sure that's a good idea?" Jazz and Maddie said simultaneously.

"I mean, your evil twin could turn up at any minute and we'll need you," Jazz added.

"He is _not_ my twin. That's too gross to even think about," Danny protested. "But we'll be fine. We'll both be wearing our communication devices," he pointed to the earbud in his own ear to illustrate. "You can call us and we'll be back in a flash. You know how fast I can fly."

"And I'll be tricked out to the max," Sam said, fastening on the Specter Deflector as she spoke. She already wore her favorite wrist gun, and carried a Thermos and a more powerful gun.

Maddie eyed them. Danny sent her his most innocent _please_ look. "All right," she agreed. "But no more than fifteen minutes. Strike should be back by then and we need to settle on what everyone's doing."

"Sure, Mom. Thanks!" In a flash Danny was practically dragging Sam upstairs and out the door. In the past, the Specter Deflector would have made this impossible, but the year before they had modified it using technology from Jack Fenton's "Boo-merang" so that Danny could touch anyone wearing the Deflector but it still prevented other ghosts from harming the person wearing the beltlike device.

"Hey, what's the rush?" Sam demanded once they were on the street.

"I thought you could use a break," he admitted.

"Thanks. I was dying to get out of there, even if it is safer." Sam kissed his cheek. "For a big, tough superhero, you're pretty sweet."

"I have my moments."

"Cute." Sam eyed him. "Why _else_ did you want to get out of there?"

"You think I didn't just want to spend some time alone with…OK, you got me. There's actually two things. One, I wanted to check on Mr. Lancer. He's the only part of the equation we haven't taken into account. Don't worry!" he said when she gave him a look. "We'll be invisible the whole way over. I just want to check and make sure Flame-Head hasn't gotten to him first."

Sam thought this over. She took his hand, and Danny made them both invisible."Sounds good. What's the other thing?"

"Plan B."

"There's a Plan B?"

"This is sort of an if-all-else-fails-last-resort kind of Plan B. If getting the medallion off doesn't do the trick or isn't working for some reason, or we get it off and we _still_ can't beat him, we have to keep him contained somehow. If my idea works, he'll at least be less powerful. I think."

He explained. Sam heard him out, but even invisible he could tell she was frowning.

"Danny, are you _sure_ you want to do it? If it backfires, things could get a whole lot worse instead of better."

"I know. I told you this was a last resort."

"I don't really like it. We're on shaky ground with the original plan as it is. I know Jazz really thinks this will work and she finally got Strike convinced there was no other way, but her track record with plans in the past…"

"Nobody else had an idea that could even remotely work," Danny pointed out. "This guy is different than any other ghost in the world, Sam. He knows us, and probably me, better than anybody. He thinks in physical terms as well as on the ghost plane because he remembers being human through Danny Fenton and Vlad Masters. He's probably got a good idea of what any of our usual plans would be. We can't bank on outsmarting him at anything. I figure the only way to beat him is to do something incredibly stupid and obvious and hope he falls for it because he figures nobody would be that dumb."

"Our Plan A does kind of fall into that category. Your so-called 'Plan B' does too."

"He forgot about a lot of my parents' inventions last time. I bet it hasn't even occurred to him we'd use this one. It's sort of a passive thing, if you think about it. He's expecting us to come at him with weapons blazing. It's what he understands."

"And if—when, I guess—the weapons blazing doesn't work, he'll think we're out of ideas. I guess I can see where you're coming from." Sam sighed. "OK. I'll help you set it up. I still think this is a lousy Plan B, but we need all the alternative plans we can get."

"Thanks, Sam. If you come up with a Plan C, I promise to help you set that up too."

"You better." Sam squeezed his hand.

They entered a more crowded area of town and had to keep silent in order not to alert everyone to the fact that there were two invisible people walking among them. Mr. Lancer lived in a quiet neighborhood not too far from Casper High. Danny knew where his house was, but had never actually had a reason to go there until now. The small house appeared surprisingly neat for a bachelor.

Danny led Sam to the door, both still invisible, and knocked.

The door popped open after a few minutes and Mr. Lancer's bald head appeared. He looked up and down in puzzlement when he saw no one there.

"Pssst, Mr. Lancer!" Danny hissed. "It's Danny Phantom and Sam Manson. We need to talk to you, but it's important no one knows we're here. Just act natural."

Mr. Lancer looked more puzzled than ever, but he shrugged and nodded ever so slightly. Danny and Sam walked past him and into a small, sparse living room that was dominated by an enormous widescreen TV hung on one wall. Mr. Lancer turned it on, but kept the volume very low.

"That should muffle anything you have to say," he said, settling onto his comfortable-looking couch and keeping his eyes on the screen. "Like it? It's new. I bought it so I could watch the Discovery Channel in HD."

"The Discovery Channel?" Sam repeated.

"And the Book Channel," their teacher said proudly. "I'm getting with the times. Staying…how do you kids say it? Hip. Cool."

"Riiiight," answered Danny. "That falls under 'too much information.'"

"So if you didn't come to watch Deadliest Catch reruns, what is so important you had to interrupt me?"

"Well…"

With that promising start, Danny launched into the explanation. Mr. Lancer did a credible job of remaining expressionless, though he winced when Danny related who his evil self's targets likely were.

When the story was over, Mr. Lancer sighed. Surprisingly, he said, "Jekyll and Hyde, I've been expecting this."

"You _knew_ another version of Danny was going to escape from the future to try to kill us all? Why didn't you warn us?" Sam demanded.

Mr. Lancer sighed again, this time with frustration. "Don't be ridiculous, Miss Manson. Of course I had no idea this specific set of circumstances would occur. That seems to be your friend Clockwork's specialty. What I meant was, I wondered when I found out about Mr. Fenton's other identity if we'd placed too much on the shoulders of someone so young."

"I'm not sure what you mean, Mr. Lancer. My other self didn't turn evil because he was under too much pressure to be good."

"Didn't he?" Mr. Lancer replied. "From what you've said, that appears to be the case."

"Huh?" said Danny and Sam at the same time.

"He—you—cheated on the C.A.T. test in that other reality, Mr. Fenton. In my long experience as an educator, most kids don't cheat to get some sort of sadistic pleasure out of it or even because they really want to. They cheat because they think they have no chance of doing well legitimately. In your case, because you'd been spending the time most high schoolers spend on homework protecting people instead. The balance between being selfish and being selfless is a delicate one, Daniel. Very few teenagers, actually, very few _people_ can walk the line you have without tipping." He paused to let this sink in. "You could have easily turned out differently, Danny Phantom. Very easily."

"But—"

"Why was I expecting it?" Mr. Lancer smiled very faintly. "Daniel, think back to who you were in ninth grade. You hadn't made the choice to be selfless—not really. You weren't ready. You were bound to make mistakes. I've always wondered when one of those mistakes would come back to haunt us." He chuckled. "Haunt—get it—never mind. Anyway, my point is even though I'm shocked there's an evil version of you running around out for blood, in another way I'm not really surprised."

Danny considered this. Mr. Lancer had gone too deep for him with some of the stuff he'd said—he'd known the man had a philosophical side but had never had it turned on him. "I get it—I think," he admitted after a moment. "I haven't always made the right choices about what to do with my powers. And there have always been consequences. But still, Mr. Lancer, this is a little extreme. Being hunted down by an evil version of myself hardly seems like a natural consequence from a mistake I didn't even make."

"I agree. This isn't exactly the consequence I imagined either." He paused to stare vacantly at the TV, still trying to keep up the charade that they weren't there. "What now?"

"Now, well…that's a tricky question. The rest of us are at FentonWorks getting ready for when he inevitably shows up. As long as you stay away from there, I thought I'd leave what to do up to you."

"Ah, the proverbial sitting duck," Mr. Lancer said. "I've never imagined what it would be like to be one. And I find I don't like the experience. I'll lay low for awhile and quietly plan graduation from there."

"Graduation!" Danny slapped a hand to his face.

"I forgot too," Sam admitted. "It's been the last thing on my mind."

"Loathe as I am to say it, this is more important. Try to make it, both of you, but if you can't then we'll just skip the class speaker. Your diplomas can be mailed to you, worst-case scenario."

"Worst-case scenario, we won't need them," Sam muttered.

"Positive thoughts," Danny hissed back.

"Thanks for coming to warn me," Mr. Lancer said, ignoring this exchange. "It's interesting being part of your adventures this one last time, even if it's just trying not to get killed by yet another psychotic ghost. Try to make it to graduation—it's an important rite of passage. And we still want to hear your speech."

"Sure," Danny grumbled.


	9. Psychobabble

**Chapter 9: Psychobabble**

_Disclaimer: No, I don't own Danny Phantom or its characters. If I'd had an idea half that good I'd be producing shows too._

"Was it just me, or was Lancer even more out there than usual?" asked Danny as they headed back to FentonWorks, invisible again.

"No, he was definitely waxing on about something vague," Sam agreed. "At least what we told him sank in and he'll go into hiding."

"You'd think finishing high school would make him easier to understand," Danny complained. "Instead it's an excuse for him to get even weirder on us."

"Maybe once we're done with college we'll be able to decipher him." Danny felt Sam shrug. "I almost wish we'd brought Jazz along to translate."

"There's only so many people I can make invisible at a time. Three's pushing it," Danny reminded her, although she was well aware of the extent of his powers. "Besides, it's nice to have some time with just the two of us. Things have gotten so crazy since Graduation Take One."

"No kidding."

There was a pause.

"Sam, I did want to say: if this is it…"

"No, Danny, we've been through this before. We are going to make it. We are going to win. The plan is a long shot, but…" She laughed. "All our plans seem to be."

"Boy is that ever true." Danny sighed gustily.

"And yet we're still here."

"Somehow." Now it was Danny who laughed, though it was a little strained. "I was going to say this is different, but it isn't, really, is it? He's just another enemy to fight."

"And we've proven we can beat him," Sam reminded. "It won't be easy, but we've beaten powerful ghosts before. We can do it again."

Another pause. Long, drawn out. "He…scares me, Sam."

"Danny…"

"Last time we met him I never had time to stop and think. It was just trying to find any way to get back to our present time and stop him from…from…"

"Killing all of us," Sam finished. She stopped, tugging on Danny's hand to indicate he should stop as well even though they were both invisible. He could feel her looking up into his face, sense her purple eyes boring into his. "Danny. I don't believe you'll turn into that, now or ever."

"It's not that. I know I'll _never_ turn into _him_. But what scares me is that there's anything of me flying around in that suit. He's _half_ me, Sam, don't you get it? The ghost part of me—the part that's in him—isn't evil. Why isn't the good half stopping him?"

Sam was silent for awhile. He knew her well enough to imagine her frown as she thought hard. "You're right," she said slowly. "Danny _Phantom_ isn't evil. Vlad Plasmius is. I get the sense the Plasmius half is in the driver's seat."

"But then where's Danny Phantom been through all of this? Future Vlad Masters told me the evil in Plasmius overwhelmed Danny Phantom when they merged. But if we're half and half, how is that possible? I feel like there should be more conflict between right and wrong going on in him. Instead, he's evil on a level even Vlad in his heyday couldn't imagine."

"Maybe there was conflict going on at some point. Remember, he had ten years to become what he is now. Maybe as he did more and more horrible stuff the good half that was already outmatched got quieter and quieter. But I think you may be onto something. The good Danny Phantom we knew from back then is still buried in there somewhere. Maybe we can find it somehow."

"This sounds suspiciously like a Plan C."

"Not really a plan. I have no idea how we'd go about doing something like that."

"Jazz may have some ideas," Danny said, brightening as he thought about this.

"If you can get around the psycho-babble we'll have to put up with to get it out of her," grumbled Sam.

-0-0-0-

They found FentonWorks still standing and quiet. The Ghost Shield was up, which meant Danny had to become Danny Fenton before crossing it. The first thing he and Sam did was set up Danny's Plan B. Then they wandered down into the lab.

The four occupants had retreated to their own separate corners. Jack was still snacking, Maddie was still tinkering, Tucker had begun a videogame on his PDA, and Jazz was typing something into the Fentons' ghost database. Each had at least one weapon within easy reach.

"Hey, we're back," Danny announced as they came in.

"Hi, hon," Maddie said, glancing up with a smile. "Heard you come in, and I didn't think that filthy evil version of you would use the door. Glad you're back. Did you have a nice walk?"

"Sure."

"Fine."

"Good. Still nothing here." Maddie went back to screwing something into the device she was working on.

"We'd noticed," Sam muttered. She went over to see what Tucker was doing, leaving Danny to address his sister.

"Hey, Jazz," Danny greeted. "What are you doing?"

Jazz frowned at the computer screen. "Entering what we know about this evil future you-and-Vlad hybrid into the database so I can analyze it. He must have a weakness somewhere. All ghosts do, even if it's just round things like in the Box Ghost's case."

"I dunno, Jazz. He's me and Vlad combined. That's not a lot of scope for weakness."

"You all have weaknesses, Danny," Jazz repeated, smiling.

"Jazz…" Danny paused. "Can I talk to you?"

Even someone untrained in psychology could not misunderstand the tone of Danny's voice. As it was, Jazz immediately turned in her chair to give her brother her full attention. "Sure. What is it?"

"Sam and I were talking during our…walk. We thought maybe…well…since this blue-skinned menace is part me, there might be, well…"

"Something left of you in there?" Jazz finished for him. "I've thought of the same thing. I can't figure out why he's behaving the way he is—from a psychological standpoint it makes no sense. Even though this case is highly unusual where two distinct personalities seem to have been melded into one, the sum of the two parts just doesn't add up into the resulting whole. At least of what I've observed of him thus far. It's got to be because I'm missing some piece of the complex puzzle that makes him what he is."

Danny had almost followed this. "Sam thinks it might be because he had ten years to get more evil."

"That's a good hypothesis." Jazz was really warming to her task now, and Danny settled in for a long wait before he got anything useful out of it. "But we don't know enough about those intervening ten years to test it. I wonder if—"

"He's been like that since day one," said another voice from behind them. Danny and Jazz jumped. Strike had returned from the Ghost Zone unnoticed by either of them. She set Tucker's old laptop down on the counter, far enough away from any other technology that if it did anything unusual, there would be plenty of time to stop it before things got out of hand.

Jazz missed only half a beat before she was over her surprise and into Harvard psychologist mode. "If you could expound on that…?"

"I mean, Phantom—not you, ghost-kid—has been deranged and destructive since he first came into being. He blew up Vlad Masters' castle after brutally murdering human Danny Fenton within about five minutes after he was created. He then went on a several-years-long rampage that nearly engulfed the entire human realm in flames. It took a coalition of humans led by Valerie Gray to defeat him in the human realm. Afterwards they set up Amity Park and a few other ghost-free haven cities. He then moved on to the Ghost Zone, which became a constant battleground for the next five years or so." Strike thoughtfully reached one hand up and touched the end of her facial scar near the ear. The gesture seemed almost involuntary. "He'd just figured out how to break down the citywide Ghost Shields in the human realm and was destroying Amity Park again when Danny, Sam and Tucker appeared in that timeline thanks to Clockwork."

"Hmmm." Jazz digested this. If she were wearing glasses, which she didn't because her vision was perfect, Danny could tell they would be on the end of her nose. "What were the circumstances that led to the merge? I don't think you ever told me, Danny."

"After you and the others were killed in an explosion at the Nasty Burger, I went to live with Vlad," Danny explained. "According to Future Vlad Masters, I asked him to separate my ghost self from my human self to make the pain of losing all of you go away. Apparently, Danny Phantom turned around and did the same to him, and then for some unknown reason decided it would be a great idea to merge with Vlad Plasmius. The rest…well, you know."

"It's a bit more complicated," Strike interjected. Her usually stern voice was quiet, almost sympathetic. "Did he tell you how the explosion at the Nasty Burger happened?"

"No. And neither did…Phantom, or whatever you call him. I just know it all came from him cheating on the C.A.T."

"That's what started the ball rolling. But in that reality, Danny Phantom deliberately took the test answers when an opportunity to do so occurred. You ended up with them in this reality as a test of Clockwork's, to see if you would react differently if you acquired them by accident."

Danny flushed. "Nothing changed. I was still going to cheat."

"True. Sending you into the future to meet your other self was a last resort on our part." Strike's voice gentled again. "But there's something else you should know. In that reality, Mr. Lancer requested that you and your parents meet him at the Nasty Burger to make a point about screwing up your future for good, or some such thing. Jazz, Sam and Tucker were all inside the Nasty Burger itself, to give you moral support but out of sight. That explosion…that was a freak accident because one of the idiots behind the counter turned the wrong knob on some sauce container; it wasn't ghost-related at all. But I think the pain of losing everyone he cared about was compounded for that Danny by the fact that he hesitated. He could have saved any of you as Danny Phantom—but only two, three at the most. The choice was too much. In the end, he couldn't do anything because he waited too long to act. You all perished, and he was forced to use his ghost powers to save himself, and only himself."

"Wow." Jazz's face was far away as she digested this. "So not only was that Danny feeling the grief and loneliness of losing all of us, but he also had major guilt knowing he could have saved _someone_. And realizing it never would have happened had he done the right thing and not cheated on the C.A.T. made it all worse. Separating human and ghost must have seemed like an attractive option at such a vulnerable point."

"Why?" asked Danny. "I can't imagine doing it now. Particularly not merging with Vlad Plasmius even if Danny Fenton and Danny Phantom were to become separate."

"It's natural to want to run from such deep emotional pain. Any possible way to escape it appears good compared to what the person is going through at the moment."

"Future Masters did say something about me not wanting human emotions dragging me down," Danny remembered.

"Let's work with that theory," Jazz said, her voice getting more and more prim with every word. "Though if I'm right the opposite appears to have happened—negative emotion seems to be heightened in the pure ghost state rather than taken away. Anyway, that's beside the point. In such a distressed state, rationality is weakened. Not only does this possibly explain the attack on and merger with Vlad Plasmius, but also why Danny Phantom's innate altruism has become virtually silent in the subject entity."

"In English?" Danny demanded.

Jazz blinked. "Sorry. What I mean is that Danny was so upset and guilty over what had happened that he was willing to do things that didn't make much sense. And the goodness in him got mixed up in the merger when the evil in Vlad Plasmius influenced him even further."

"So even Danny Phantom is evil by now," Danny clarified.

"Not 'evil' per say," Jazz said. "Just incredibly impulsive and emotionally volatile, which when mixed with Vlad Plasmius' lack of morals means he's pretty much capable of anything."

"We knew that already," pointed out Strike. Her usual brisk voice was back. "But it's interesting to hear a workable theory as to why. I've sometimes wondered what it was that made this ghost so completely conscienceless when Danny Phantom has always striven to protect people."

"Glad there's such a _striking_ difference," Danny said. Strike smirked at him.

Sam and Tucker came over. "Any ideas?" asked Sam.

"Haven't gotten that far yet," Danny informed her.

Tucker opened his mouth to ask a question but was interrupted by a horrible wailing noise from outside. Everyone in the room covered their ears. The entire building shivered in its foundations, as if shuddering at the prospect of what stood outside.

"What is _that_?" Jack demanded, his voice managing to carry over the din.

"He's here!" Strike shouted back. "Get ready!"

* * *

_Author's Note: Completely random sidenote—I've always wanted to use the word 'altruism' in a fic. It's one of my favorite words. Thank you Jazz for your lovably pretentious side that lets me use fun vocabulary words._


	10. Battle Royale

**Chapter 10: Battle Royale**

_Disclaimer: I do not own Danny Phantom or its characters. Original stuff belongs to me._

Slipping and stumbling as the building danced around them, the humans lunged for weapons. Strike brought the scythe out of her staff.

"I'm going ghost!" Danny shouted. Standing straight, he made the switch to Danny Phantom. Twin rings of light shot out of his middle, transitioning his t-shirt and jeans to black and white jumpsuit. He felt the familiar bizarre prickling in his eyeballs and tingle in his scalp that meant his irises were turning green and his black hair white. No matter how many times he made the transition, the sensations were still decidedly odd. Danny wondered irrelevantly whether his evil opposite missed the exhilarating feeling of being able to change. Then all such thoughts had to be pushed aside.

He and Strike went intangible and shot through the ceiling. The wailing went on and on, forcing both to cover their ears once they came out above the roof and got the full force of the noise. The whole world seemed to be coming apart at the seams.

And then it stopped. Danny and Strike looked around cautiously. The generator for the Ghost Shield gave one last mechanical wheeze and died, a few components shooting out to rattle over the top of FentonWorks. The Shield retracted in seconds, leaving the two of them within feet of Danny's evil counterpart.

The bigger ghost grinned at them both, baring his glittering fangs. "And here you _both_ are. You were stupid enough to all gather in one place rather than letting me have the fun of picking you off one by one. I admit, I'm disappointed. I expected you at least would have split by now, Clockstrike."

Danny heard Strike growl. He frowned a little. This wasn't the first jibe his alternate self had taken at Strike that seemed to hint at some sort of history between the two. Danny hadn't really paid a lot of attention to this, but he made a mental note look out for other such exchanges in the future.

To distract Strike and remind her to stick to the plan, he quipped, "Spilt? I think that's my cue." Concentrating hard, he doubled himself. Both copies charged ecto-blasts. Strike took the hint. Like her father, when she split into copies each appeared to be from a different era of history. In her case, she became four separate figures: a Spartan warrior woman (Danny was proud of himself for recognizing this using his knowledge, courtesy of Sam, that the ancient city-state had trained its women for battle) clad in purple Greek armor, a female ninja in a purple robe, a modern policewoman in purple riot gear, and her usual purple jumpsuit-and-cape ensemble.

"Awww, how cute," sneered their opponent. "I'm _really_ afraid now."

"You're outnumbered, old man," both the Danny Phantoms pointed out. "We won't let you hurt anyone!"

His nemesis snorted. "You actually think you stand a chance? Let's put it to the test." He effortlessly split himself into four. All the copies now sneered identically. "Ready to dance?"

Danny's two copies fired their ecto-blasts. He missed; all his opponent's copies dodged easily. Then the other Danny was on top of him, and things seemed to go insane after that.

Later, Danny remembered only too clearly the punishment he had taken in that desperate fight. At the time, it was all a blur of ducking, dodging, attacking and blocking. His two copies were evenly matched against _one_ of his opponents' four, leaving the other three for Strike and his newly-arrived parents, sister and friends. They seemed to be faring no better than he was; from the brief glimpses he caught they could only hold the flame-haired ghosts at bay, and deal little damage themselves. Danny had been hoping that by encouraging the other ghost to split the copies would be weaker than the whole, as happened when he split himself. Already he'd underestimated Phantom's power badly; each copy of the evil ghost was just as strong as the single. Danny didn't like to think that already Plan A was falling to bits.

One of his copies took a vicious kick to the gut, knocking him into…himself. In surprise the two merged into one Danny Phantom again, and there was no time to split apart. A punch was coming right at his head. Cursing himself for getting so close that the copy he was fighting could use physical blows, Danny did the only thing he could think of: he caught the punch with both hands.

Everything seemed to freeze. Danny's muscles groaned, but he had grabbed the oncoming fist squarely and halted it bare inches from his face. The copy whose hand he'd just stopped stared at him with wide red eyes and gaping mouth, plainly astonished by this display of sheer physical strength. Danny was vaguely aware that all the other surrounding fights had stopped as well to gape at them. Sweat popped out on his forehead as he struggled to contain the force behind the blow.

"But you…you're weak…" the copy attempting to punch him gasped.

"Not…as weak as you thought," Danny grinned a little despite his strain. Summoning up his ice powers, he drove them through his hand and over his opponent, covering the other in a prison of ice.

"No!" A chorus of shouts seemed to come from all directions as the ice-prison started to fall out of the air. The other three copies left their own fights and came streaming in. All three turned intangible and merged with their trapped counterpart to form one entity again. Red light flashed out from the frozen form, catching in the ice crystals and making the whole thing glitter like some sort of giant oblong disco ball from hell. At least, that was Danny's thought while watching it. Then he and everyone else on the roof were forced to cover their eyes as the ice exploded off his evil counterpart in a blaze. Shards flew in all directions. Danny and Strike, down to just herself and her ninja copy, went intangible to avoid the brunt of all the shards.

The fire-haired ghost laughed at them all. "Nice try," he chuckled. "But that little trick—interesting as it is—won't work so easily this time."

"Jealous?" Danny taunted. He made a perfect miniature ice figurine of the fire-headed ghost, then let it fall and shatter on the roof. "Oops."

"Danny!" hissed Sam. "Making him angry seems like a bad idea."

"Yeah, annoy him too much and he annihilates the whole block," Tucker added.

Danny ignored them both. "We're not helpless kids anymore," he said to his opposite self. "Do you really think you can kill us all?"

"Please." The other rolled his eyes, but Danny was sure he detected a hint of worry there. "I can get rid of all of you with one hand tied behind my back. _Both_ hands, in fact."

Danny sensed what he was going to do and threw up the fastest, most powerful shield he could manage. He had no idea if one of his shields could withstand the force of a Ghostly Wail, or what containing that much raw power might do to him.

He knew he had to try or risk losing everything.

_That_ made him angry. His other self had done nothing but try to take away the people most important to him. He was _not_ going to win, no matter what.

The Wail hit his shield like a hammer blow. Danny held it as long as he could, but finally felt himself fall helplessly out of the air as all of his power went into containing the blast. Distantly he felt himself change from Danny Phantom into Danny Fenton.

"Danny!" several voices yelled at once. They sounded far away. Danny hit something soft. Arms went around him.

_Dad caught me_, he thought, an instant before Jack's voice demanded, "Are you all right, son?"

Danny could only groan in response. He felt his father gently lay him down, and a hand grab his. Sam, he was sure.

"Danny, you saved us," her voice said, proving his guess correct.

"Wha…" he managed.

"You held his Ghostly Wail and kept it from destroying the house right out from under us. Actually," now he could hear the smirk in her voice, "the only damage he did was to himself. His Wail bounced back and hit him. Looks like he's out cold."

This Danny had to see. He struggled to sit up against a body gone weak and floppy. Sam put a hand under his shoulder and heaved.

"Thanks," he managed, his brain still scattered. He blurted the next thing that came into his mind, which was: "You really have been working out."

Sam smirked. "I have to do _something_ while you have your man-time with Dash."

"_Hey_—"

"Oh, relax, Danny. Geez, it's still too easy." Sam rolled her eyes.

Danny glared at her but let the issue drop. Seeing his rival unconscious for the first time was too interesting. The other ghost lay sprawled on the roof, muscled arms and legs akimbo. His head of flames was down from its usual bright white burn to a light flicker.

Nobody seemed to want to go near him, not even Strike. They just stared.

"What now?" Tucker finally ventured.

"We get that medallion off of him," Strike declared.

"Forgive me if I want him tied up, or something, first before we start searching him," said Sam.

"I'll get some rope from the Op Center." Jazz sprinted across the roof.

Still none of the people left on the roof wanted to go near Danny's counterpart. Not even Sam or Jack, two of the most fearless people Danny knew. Or maybe they were just preoccupied with supporting Danny. Not that Danny could blame anyone. _He_ certainly wasn't rushing over there to get a closer look at his evil half.

Jazz returned with the rope. It was she who finally knelt down beside the other Danny, turned him over, and bound his wrists. "Now what?"

Strike came gliding over to join her. She bent and began feeling around the unconscious form's neckline. She cursed under her breath. "He's got the damn thing intangible. We're going to have to find some other way to get it off."

"Technus?" suggested Tucker. "I can get the laptop."

"No," Maddie protested. "There's too much close-range wireless stuff in the Op Center. I don't want him downloading anything…funny."

"Or stealing my ham and fudge," Jack put in.

"Then we have to get him…downstairs." Sam voice the distaste they were all feeling. "Gross."

"We have to _touch_ him?" Tucker practically wailed. "Isn't there some ghostly power where you can levitate him instead? Like the Lunch Lady does with food?"

"I can't do that," Danny protested.

"Neither can I," Strike added. "I'm not a poltergeist."

"Ugh," Sam groaned. "Well, let's get a move on." She untwined herself from Danny, went and draped one of the unconscious ghost's arms around her neck. She grimaced as if touching something slimy. "Well, help me!" she demanded of the others when she saw them continuing to stare at her.

That brought the small group out of its stupor. Everyone but Jack and Strike pitched in to haul the other Danny down to the basement. Strike generously carried as much of their ghostfighting equipment as she could manage in addition to her staff. Jack, the tallest of the group, supported Danny—he was the only one who could comfortably do it. By the time they were on the ground floor Danny was already feeling much better. As he got older and more experienced he had found that he could bounce back more quickly after a full drain of his powers. Upon reaching the basement itself he stepped away from his father and stood alone. He caught Sam eyeing him nervously but to his relief she did not say anything. Sam tended to hover a little too much for his taste if she thought he had pushed too hard.

Danny's evil counterpart was dumped in an unceremonious fashion to the lab floor. While Tucker went to get the laptop containing Technus Danny noted with interest that Strike conscientiously sorted everyone's weapons and began the process of placing them within reach of their owners.

"Got it," Tucker said from the far side of the lab. He held the laptop carefully, as if touching it made his skin creep. "Now what—"

Two things happened simultaneously. The laptop's lid flipped open of its own accord, revealing Technus' leering face. "I, Technus, Master of All…"

No one was really listening to the beginnings of Tenchnus' familiar opening speech because of the other thing that occurred. The flickering fire of their prisoner's hair suddenly went from dull coals to burning white-hot. The blaze made everyone cover their eyes for an instant. When they looked back, the other Danny was hovering in the air, unbound, laughing wildly. Apparently it took him even less time than Danny to return to full strength after a drain. A lot less time.

The other Danny saw Technus' face. The Master of Technology was, for once, speechless. "You!" Danny's evil self snapped. He whipped around to sneer at Danny, somehow managing to include the nearby Strike in his disdain. "_This _was your big plan? Get the pathetic pile of outdated software to zap me?"

"Hey, I'm the most up-to-date—" Technus began.

"Shut _up_." The other Danny hurled a palmful of green fire at the laptop, which disintegrated into a pile of circuitry and ectoplasmic ooze.

"Yuck!" Tucker yelled, shaking his hands to rid them of the green slime.

Technus appeared, apparently freed when his hiding place fell apart. "I, Technus, shall—" He stopped abruptly.

Evil Danny had another ectoplasmic shot charged in one hand and aimed at the other ghost. His pale blue face was expressionless. "I am _so_ not in the mood for your idiotic monologues," he purred. "But if you really want to finish that thought, be my guest."

Technus took less than a second to make his decision. He dove for the Fenton Portal and vanished.

"Hey, come back here!" Sam called. "We need—"

"Nothing," their foe finished her sentence. "What you need is to _die_. Like you should have three years ago."

"Sam!" Danny lunged forward as his counterpart charged a shot. Though still dangerously low on power, the seventeen-year-old half-ghost had enough to change into Danny Phantom and whisk his girlfriend out of harm's way.

"That's it," Danny told her as he set her down several feet away from her original position, at which there was a smoking crater. "We're out of options. Desperate times call for desperate measures. It's time for Plan B."


	11. Desperate Measures

**Chapter 11: Desperate Measures**

_Disclaimer: I do not own Danny Phantom or any of its characters._

"But, Danny…!" Sam whispered back. "You know what could happen. What if he…? What if you…"

"If you have a Plan C, now's the time. He's got to be stopped."

Sam opened her mouth, then closed it. "Fine. Good luck." Plainly she wasn't happy about it, though.

Danny thought quickly. His first objective in Plan B was to get his rival to chase him. That had seemed a simple enough thing when he had come up with the plan, but now the rest of his friends and family had spread out around the lab to engage the enemy. With so many opponents to distract his evil self, how could he attract the other ghost's attention?

Suddenly, the solution came to him. Their opponent was half him. The other half was Vlad Plasmius. Neither half renowned for their even tempers.

Danny called up a palmful of ectoplasm. He still wasn't up the full strength, but that wasn't the point. "Hey, loser!" he shouted, and hurled the glowing green ball.

Like a proverbial opening shot of a snowball fight, it hit the other Danny on the back of the neck. Had it been a snowball, the target would have wiped it off, looked at the icy, cold mess in his palm and decided war had been declared.

As it was, the slow swing to face Danny, cape draping gracefully over his shoulders, would have been the envy of any comic book villain and was reminiscent of Vlad in his prime. "What did you say?" the bigger ghost snarled.

"You heard me." Danny charged another shot. "Loser. Moron. We beat you before and we'll beat you again. In fact, you beat yourself on the roof. Think you'll fare any better this time?"

"Danny, what are you _doing_?" Jazz screeched.

"What I should have done awhile ago," Danny replied, casually bouncing his ball of ectoplasm on his palm. "I'm tired of acting all scared of this guy. He's just a big lunk with an even bigger ego."

"Maybe it's time to remind you who exactly you're dealing with," their foe purred. He charged a shot of his own. This one was quite large and obviously aimed to obliterate Danny once and for all.

"Ah-ah-ah," Danny taunted, waving a finger. "Maybe you're putting on a good show, but we both know the truth, don't we? You aren't completely recovered, whatever you want us to think. You take this building down on us, even you might not survive."

The bluff worked. His evil counterpart bared his pointed teeth. "Need I remind you that _you're_ not fully recovered either?"

"You don't know that for sure, do you? We'll see," Danny bluffed again. "Let's take this outside. Just you and me, old man." With that, he heaved his ectoplasmic ball at the other's fiery head and shot through the ceiling.

He could only pray he'd made his evil self mad enough to blindly follow.

Several years of experience with moving intangibly through his home had taught him exactly where every room was in relation to every other room down to the inch. Danny therefore knew that his own room was directly above the basement, two floors up. It was here he and Sam had placed their trap.

Danny barreled through the kitchen at his highest speed. Just before he hit the ceiling, he channeled all his remaining energy into one thing: splitting himself in half. This particular skill had given him a lot of trouble in the past, and he'd never tried it when so drained. If it didn't work, then Plan B was a wash and they were all dead.

The first part worked, barely. Splitting himself had never been more difficult. However, he managed it just in time. His two halves curved around the obstacle he and Sam had carefully placed on the floor of his room. They rejoined again almost instantly, and Danny swerved to the side to see if Plan B had been successful.

For a moment he thought he'd failed and the other Danny had not fallen for his taunts. There was a half-second of complete silence. Then the large object placed on the floor sizzled, and then it shivered.

A terrible scream split the air.

Bolts of lightning arched around Danny's room, burning odd patterns on the walls. Danny dodged them, somehow miraculously still in Danny Phantom form despite his exhaustion. He covered his face as two small explosions rocked the second floor.

Danny opened his eyes to a smoke-filled room. He heard his bedroom door fly open with a bang, and then a lot of different voices coughing as the smoke drained out into the hallway.

Slowly the room cleared. Danny waved his hand in front of his face to clear the last of the haze.

"D-Danny?" Sam's tentative voice, around a lingering cough, came from the direction of the door.

"Still here," he answered, and coughed himself. "B-barely."

In the door crowded a wide-eyed Sam, Tucker, and Jazz, all the entryway would hold. Jack peered over their heads, barely visible in the smoke even in his orange jumpsuit. Strike, unencumbered by such trivial things as doorways, came through the wall to survey the scene like the cop she was.

"Well, I knew you were prone to doing some pretty stupid things, but I never suspected this," was all she said.

_This_ lay sprawled in the middle of Danny's room, on either side of the sparking remains of the Fenton Ghost Catcher. Actually, it was two somethings. One face up, the other face down. Both completely out cold, from the looks of it.

"What _happened_?" squeaked Jazz as everyone else tumbled into the room.

"Well, the plan worked. I think," Danny replied.

"This was a _plan_?" That was Tucker, his voice at a higher decibel than usual. "To make _two_ of him? In what universe is this a good idea?"

"There aren't _two_ of him," Danny pointed out, landing gently on the floor. Maddie came and kissed his cheek, something he normally objected to but put up with under the current circumstances.

"Looks like two guys to me," said Tucker.

Danny sighed. "He's made of a fusing of me and Plasmius, right? So I was thinking if we used the Ghost Catcher to split them again—"

"You'd end up with what, exactly?" asked Jazz. "An older ghost you and an older Vlad Plasmius?"

"Pretty much, yeah."

"And this is better how?"

"Halves his power, right?" Sam pointed out. "Makes him easier to beat. At least that was the idea."

"You went along with this?" Tucker demanded.

"I didn't like it, but we had no choice when the Technus thing went south. And you gotta admit, it did work."

"Not exactly," Strike said. She was kneeling by one of the figures and examining it closely.

"What do you mean?" asked Danny.

Strike turned the one that had landed facedown face up. And everyone saw.

It was not a twenty-four-year-old Danny Phantom and a fifty-something Vlad Plasmius. The two bodies were still obviously hybrids of Danny and Vlad. The one Strike had turned over more closely resembled Danny; he had Danny's hazmat jumpsuit and most of Danny's facial features. However, the white hair was clearly Vlad's, complete with the little ponytail at the nape of the neck. The other body looked more like Vlad Plasmius, but his spiky hair was on fire—and it was black. In fact, most of their colors were the reverse of the alter ego they most closely resembled. The one that looked like Danny had a white jumpsuit with black trim. The one that looked like Vlad had a black version of Plasmius' usual flamboyant wear with white trim. Both wore capes, the Danny-lookalike a white and the Plasmius a black. Both looked to be about thirty years old. They were also both in decent physical condition, though nowhere near the pure muscled bulk of their conjoined self.

"What the…?" murmured Danny.

"Well, this is weird," remarked Tucker and Sam simultaneously.

"Extremely strange," agreed Maddie.

"This isn't how the Ghost Catcher is supposed to work," Jack said, hands on hips. "It's supposed to take the ghost out of things."

"Looks like in this case there wasn't anything to separate from the ghost, so it did its best," said Strike. She too had her hands on her hips, but she looked more interested than puzzled. "And got pretty well busted in the process."

"But…this wasn't supposed to happen," Danny complained. "It was supposed to make him into me and Plasmius again."

"Well, obviously that's _not_ what happened," pointed out Strike.

"Then what _did_ happen?"

"I have a theory," said Jazz.

"Of course you do," said Danny. "Care to share?"

"I'm going to chalk your surliness down to exhaustion and ignore it," his older sister said in her most understanding manner. "What I _think_ happened is that you and Plasmius had been blended together so long in this guy it was impossible for the Ghost Catcher to separate them. So it did something else instead."

"That's a disgusting theory. But it sounds like it could be true, so we'll roll with it," Danny added hastily when Jazz gave him a look. "So if it didn't split them back the way they were, then what did it do?"

"Exactly what you see." Jazz waved a hand vaguely at the two unconscious forms. "It found some other way to split them. Some traits went to one, some to the other."

"But which went to which?" asked Tucker.

"And why does one look more like Danny and one more like Vlad?" Sam wanted to know.

"That I can't explain. Whatever way the Ghost Catcher chose to split them, the Danny half had more of one quality and Vlad more of the other. Hence, the one that got more traits from Danny looks like Danny, and the one that got more from Vlad looks like Vlad. More or less."

"When Danny went through that thing a few years ago, one half was a hero and the other half was a total slacker," Sam recalled.

"That's good, Sam," Jazz said. "Let's work with that."

"But…" Tucker was putting the pieces together. "If the Ghost Catcher did _that_ again, then…"

"…one of these guys got all the good in Danny and Vlad…" Sam continued.

It was Strike who finished the thought: "…and the other one got all the bad."

* * *

_Author's Note: Sorry about the short chapter. Now those of you who have read Firefury Amahira's stories understand why I mentioned her at the beginning of this story. I had the idea to separate the hybrid with the Fenton Ghost Catcher at least a year before I read her stories, but I had planned from the beginning that they would not be able to split back into Danny Phantom and Vlad Plasmius the way she does and instead they'd split between good and evil._

_Sidenote/Plug: If you haven't read Firefury Amarhira's 4-part Ultimate Enemy saga, you should. They detail the ten years between the explosion at the Nasty Burger and Dan's imprisonment in the Fenton Thermos through the eyes of Dan and Valerie ("Anathema" and "Jeremiad"), the "curing" of Dan using the Ghost Catcher and psychology ("Benediction") and the return of Dan to become the unlikely savior of the timeline he originally screwed up so badly ("Indemnification"), and they are excellent. Firefury obviously put a lot of time, love and work into these stories and it shows. If you like this story, you'll probably like hers too._

_SamoaPhoenix9_


	12. Phantom Gathering

**Chapter 12: Phantom Gathering**

_Disclaimer: I do not own Danny Phantom or its characters._

There was silence in the room after this pronouncement. Everyone stared at the two figures on the floor.

"Ummm…" Sam finally ventured. "How do we tell if they were split between good and evil? Or if the Ghost Catcher did something else?" From her tone, it sounded very much as if she was hoping Jazz was wrong.

"We have to wait for them to wake up," Maddie said. "Given how strong that monster was, I doubt it will take too long even if his ghostly powers are split between the two."

As if to prove her words, the copy that looked like Danny stirred a little, while the Vlad-copy groaned.

"Owww…" moaned the ponytailed Danny.

"Uh-oh," said Sam.

Everyone watched tensely as both copies sat up simultaneously. They looked down at their gloved hands.

"What the…" murmured the Vlad-copy. His hands went to his face. His counterpart's hands went to his ponytailed hair.

Then they looked at each other.

"Ahhhh!" they both screamed, scrabbling away to opposite walls.

"What have you _done_, you damned fools?" demanded the Vlad-copy.

"Swearing. That one's definitely the evil one," commented Sam to no one. Danny shot her a look.

"Split you," he answered the copy's question. "You're a lot less of a headache this way."

"_Split_ us?" the Vlad-with-burning-hair snarled. His black hair burned more intensely with every word. "Well, _un_-split us! _Put us back_!"

"No can do," said Danny, with a small amount of relish in his voice. "The Ghost Catcher's destroyed. You're stuck like this."

"_Stuck_?" both copies repeated, in an eerie echo of one another—their voices were slightly different, enough to distinguish between them, but not by much. The Vlad-copy looked infuriated. The Danny-copy just looked stunned.

"_No_." The Vlad-copy, predictably, recovered first. "I do _not_ accept this. I can't stay like this. I'm…weaker. I can feel it. Some of _my_ power is in _him_."

"Seriously," Danny said. He waved at the Ghost Catcher, which still had the occasional stray spark dancing around it. Several of the strands that made it look like a Native American dream catcher had snapped, and parts of it were blackened. "Get used to the less-powerful thing."

"You're bluffing," the Vlad-copy insisted. He lunged to his feet and leapt at Danny in a very fast move that took everyone in the room by surprise and left them too stunned to help.

Except for one person. The copy of Danny had anticipated this move and also lunged forward. He tackled his other half just a foot or so from the real Danny and sent them both crashing into the wall.

"_Leave him alone_," Danny's copy snarled in a voice filled with such venom Danny couldn't help but wonder whether they were all wrong in their assumption that the one that looked like Vlad had to be the evil one.

"Let me go, you idiot!" the Vlad-copy insisted, still pinned against the wall. "Don't you _want_ to go back to being the most powerful being on the planet?"

"No," the other returned flatly.

"_What?_" It was more than just the Vlad-copy that exclaimed at this pronouncement. There was a dead silence for a second or two.

Unfortunately, it also meant the copy of Danny loosened his grip on his counterpart. The Vlad-copy broke free and charged, not at Danny this time, but at Strike. This development was so shocking even Strike wasn't ready for it. She was out cold before any of them knew what had happened. Her staff clattered to the floor.

Out came the weapons of all the humans in the room. Danny, weak as he was, charged a small ectoplasmic shot in one palm.

"Don't move!" Jack commanded. Danny sighed, hiding a rueful smile. Trust Dad to take charge even in a situation he didn't fully understand.

"Well, I've heard _that_ before," snickered the Vlad-copy, sounding exactly like the fused version. He bared a fang. "Too many times to count. Usually right before I _end_ them."

He took a deep breath. Danny realized what was about to happen, and knew he was too exhausted to conjure a shield of any shape or form.

Nothing happened. The Vlad-copy's mouth was open, but nothing was coming out. He tried again, and again nothing happened.

"Wow, looks like you're nothing but hot air," Danny quipped. Out of the corner of his eye he saw his older copy slap his forehead in a bizarrely familiar gesture.

"And it looks like I was right," Jazz said smugly. "The split means they each got some abilities but not others."

"No!" screamed the Vlad-copy. Now he looked truly deranged. "You can't leave me like this!" He began charging shots and randomly firing them around the room. Everyone flung themselves to the floor to get out of the way. Weirdly enough, Danny noted that his own copy was military-crawling across the floor towards Strike. He had no idea what the other planned to do with her—though he was fairly sure by now the copy currently blasting his room to bits was the evil half.

"Danny!" hissed Sam in his ear, jolting him. "We've got to do something before he tears this whole place apart!"

Danny nodded. "On the count of three, start shooting at him. We've got to see if we can bring him down. You've got a Thermos, right?"

"When do I not?"

"Oh, right. You sleep with one these days."

"Like you don't?"

"No, I sleep _next_ to one." Danny grinned at his girlfriend.

"Hilarious." Sam poked him. "Ready?"

"I am now. On three. One…two…three!"

He and Sam began pelting the Vlad-copy, Danny from his hands and Sam from her favorite wrist-gun. Jazz, still in the Fenton Peeler, saw what they were doing and joined them from her own corner of the room, and Jack and Maddie from theirs. Tucker was huddled under Danny's desk, doing something frantic with his PDA Danny hoped was going to be helpful. Danny's copy, on the other hand, was…shielding Strike's unconscious form. Danny blinked in astonishment and then had to dodge an ecto-blast he'd missed in his moment of distraction.

Unfortunately, despite their opponent's obvious blind rage, he was still capable of fending off four Fentons, Sam and Tucker combined. None of their attacks were having any effect.

"Any suggestions?" Danny asked Sam.

"No idea, other than trying to wear him down. It _is_ six-on-one," Sam pointed out.

"Good point."

Suddenly, the window shattered inward. Through it streaked yet another black-and-white figure.

"Dani!" Danny exclaimed. His female clone had grown a lot since he had last seen her. Not only was she much taller, but she had _curves_. Obvious ones, made all the more noticeable by her tight-fitting, stylish jumpsuit. But there was no mistaking who had come to their rescue.

"As usual, you need me to save your butt," the white-haired young teenager said as she surveyed the scene, arms crossed. "It's a wonder you can handle yourself when I'm not around." Her eyes fell on the Vlad-copy. "You!" she growled.

"Not exactly, but for all intents and purposes, go at it as if he were," said Danny, waving one arm in the general direction of the copy.

"No problem. You can explain the costume change and the burning hair later," Dani Phantom said. She charged an ecto-blast and sent it soaring towards their foe.

He caught sight of her and started. "_Another_ half-ghost? And a _girl_? What's the meaning of this?"

"Don't you remember me, _Dad_?" Dani snarled.

"_Dad_?" Both the Vlad- and Danny-copies exclaimed.

"Huh boy," said Danny, facepalming. "I forgot—Vlad hadn't cloned her yet in that timeline before we fused. What a messed-up little family reunion this is turning out to be. Too many Danny Phantoms in one place."

"No kidding," Sam agreed.

Dani Phantom lost no time in joining battle against their common enemy. For his part, the Vlad-copy seemed uninhibited in fighting a girl despite his opening remarks. Dani had been practicing, Danny had to admit. She was very, very good. Well, she'd always been a little ball of raw talent. She'd been a match for him since the beginning. While she was definitely outclassed by their foe, she was fresher than any of them and therefore stood a pretty good chance. And all they really needed, as Danny whispered to Sam, was a clear shot with the Fenton Thermos.

Thus Sam was ready when Dani finally scored a hit. The Vlad-copy staggered backwards as one of Dani's blasts took him in the shoulder. That was all Sam needed. She fired the Fenton Thermos.

"Nooooo! Not there! Not again!" screamed the Vlad-copy as the Thermos' energy blast overwhelmed him. "I'll get out, and I'll get my powers back! This isn't…" his voice faded, and there was silence.

Everyone stared at the Fenton Thermos. Then Danny looked around the remains of his bedroom. It was mostly a smoking, black mess punctuated with glowing green ectoplasm here and there, although most of his smaller things like his laptop and clothes were still intact. It was the furniture and the walls that had taken the brunt of everything.

"Wow, good thing I'm moving out soon," he remarked. "Didn't think that would be an upside of going to college."

"Sorry, Danny," Danielle apologized. She landed beside him.

"Don't apologize, Cuz," Danny said, giving Sam a quick victory kiss out of pure happiness that they appear to have won yet again. "You came at just the right time. How did you know?"

"I got your invite. Duh." Dani pulled something white from a pocket and waved it at him. "I know I'm a little late for the ceremony, but I wanted to put in an appearance…"

"Actually, you're right on time. The ceremony had to be rescheduled due to imminent ghost attack by the actual Vlad Plasmius. Who is currently out of commission and in another timeline."

"Wait, so that's not—" Dani raised an eyebrow at the Fenton Thermos in Sam's hands. Then her eyes went to Strike, and then the thirty-year-old Danny-copy. "Whoa. OK, I want my explanation. Now."

Danny smiled. He had almost missed Dani's high-handed bossiness. "It's a long story."

"One that involves time travel, alternate universes, and more," Tucker said, crawling out from under the remains of Danny's desk.

"Sounds like a Star Trek episode," Dani remarked, hands on hips.

"But not really as fun, considering how many times we've almost died in the past few days alone," Tucker sighed.

"To start out with, who are _they_?" Dani demanded, pointing at Strike and the Danny-copy. "And why does he look like an old version of you with Vlad's hair?"

"She's Clockstrike. She's like a time cop. She's been helping protect us from an evil version of me from another timeline bent on killing us all. We split him in half using the Fenton Ghost Catcher, and now one half is in here," Danny shook the Fenton Thermos. "And _he's_ the other half." He nodded at his doppelganger.

"Way to roll our last two days into five sentences, dude," Tucker said, sounding impressed.

"Oh." Danielle digested this. "Why did the guy we just put in the Thermos look like Vlad, then?"

"I fused with Vlad in another timeline and created the most evil, powerful ghost ever."

"Wow. Gross." Dani wrinkled her nose.

"Exactly," agreed Danny. "The Ghost Catcher was supposed to separate them again. Instead it looks like it created a good and an evil half."

"That's not so bad. The evil guy wasn't too tough," Dani said, pounding one fist into the other palm.

"Except he was nowhere near at full strength," Sam pointed out. "He was still weak from fighting all of us and then being split. I'd hate to be around him at his most powerful."

"Hmmm." Dani's eyebrows both went up. "I guess I see your point. Well, you're welcome. I texted Tucker when I got to Amity Park to see where would be a good place to meet. He mentioned you might need some backup."

"Mentioned?" Tucker repeated. "As I recall, the message was—" He consulted his PDA, "Need help ASAP. Danny's room. Helphelphelphelp!"

"Well, this is no time to stand here bickering," Maddie said. "Hello, Danielle. My, you've become a young lady since the last time we saw you. Welcome back." She had finally met Danielle the last time the young ghost had visited and the two had hit it off. Maddie and Jack had completely bought the "long-lost cousin" story. Maddie of course didn't know all of Jack's side of the family, and Jack couldn't remember if he'd ever had a cousin with a kid. Danny and the others never planned to tell them Danielle's real origins.

"Thanks, Aunt Maddie," Dani beamed.

"You must be hungry after that long trip. If there's anything left of the kitchen, does anyone want lunch?"

"Me! Me!" Jack hopped up and down, clicking his heels.

"I'm a little hungry," Dani admitted.

Maddie led the way out the door. "I'll leave the rest of you kids to start cleaning up in here. Come down for lunch when you're ready." She led Dani and Jack out of Danny's blackened room.


	13. Out of the Inferno

**Chapter 13: Out of the Inferno**

_Disclaimer: I don't own Danny Phantom or its characters._

Jazz, Sam, Tucker and Danny looked at each other, and then at the Danny-copy and Strike.

The Danny-copy looked back at them. Danny noted with interest that his eyes were green, not red as the fused version's had been. They also looked very, very sad and tired.

The copy stood. "Thank you," he said simply.

"For what?" asked Sam.

"I'm free, finally. You have no idea…" The copy looked away for a moment, closing his eyes as if trying to shut out pain. "You have no idea what it was like. Living every day trapped in a helpless nightmare. Wanting to do the right thing with the vast powers you know you possess, and unable to control yourself when all you did was destroy."

"So you _are_ the manifestation of the good in Danny Phantom," Jazz said with satisfaction.

"And Vlad Plasmius," the other admitted. He reached back and touched his ponytail. "Believe it or not, there was a little scrap of good in him. Many of the evil things he did, he did out of misguided love for Maddie. I have that in me, too. Just like there was a scrap of evil in Danny Phantom that is now in _him_."

"Why are you _old_?" Tucker blurted out.

"Old?" the Danny-copy repeated.

"You look like you're about thirty," Sam said bluntly.

"Really?" the copy glanced down at his hands. "Any chance there's a mirror around?"

"If you don't mind a cracked one," Danny said, gesturing.

"Great. Seven years of bad luck. You'd think I've had enough bad luck to last a lifetime already," grumbled the copy, losing his world-weary tone for a moment and sounding more like his younger counterpart.

As he made his way over to the mirror, Danny and Sam exchanged a look that said, _Are you finding this really, really weird? Good. So am I._

The copy examined his face in the mirror for a long moment. When he turned back, he looked sad again. "I guess this age is some sort of average between Danny Phantom and Vlad Plasmius. Why this didn't happen when we originally fused, I have no idea." He blinked, and then visibly groped for a new subject. "So that girl who flew in, the other half-ghost…who is she? She can't be your cousin."

"That's Danielle," Danny said. "Da_ni_ Phantom. With an 'i,' as she likes to remind us. No, she's not my cousin, though Mom and Dad think she is. She's actually a slightly failed clone Vlad made of me. Which still creeps me out. She's nice enough, though. Definitely has a personality all her own. And occasionally helpful to have around, as you saw."

"I have something about a cloning project being in the works from Vlad's memories before we fused," the other Danny said, massaging one temple. "But it was never successful. All the clones were unstable."

"Stabilizing her took some work," Danny admitted. "She has to come back here for a dose of a serum Dad invented every so often to keep from melting into nothing. The main difference between her and me is that she has a finite amount of power she can use before she starts to destabilize. The cap on that power is pretty high, though, so it doesn't happen often. It means we see her once in a blue moon."

"Major case of wanderlust, that kid," Sam commented.

"I see. How did she happen to be in the area when you needed help?"

"She's good at that," Danny said.

"Also, it's our high school graduation," Sam added. "In case Danny was going to conveniently fail to mention that."

"I wondered if that was it." He eyed all four of them, particularly Danny, who topped him by half a head. "You guys have certainly grown up. I might not have an ounce of humanity left in me," here his smile had a little twist of irony, "but I did miss you. Not a day went by that I didn't blame myself for what happened."

"Don't," said Jazz. "It's in the past."

He sighed. "It's not that simple, Jazz."

"It could be. If you let it." She looked at him steadily, though Danny sensed a hint of the clinical Ghost Psychologist in her stance and tone. They were entering dangerous territory; when in this mood his sister could get carried away relatively easily.

The copy, however, had had thirteen years of no interaction with Jazz and did not pick up on this. "I'm responsible," he insisted.

"You're not. It was an accident," Jazz said gently. "Strike told us how it happened in your reality. You hesitated in making a decision that was way beyond your maturity level. That could happen to anyone. And you've been beating yourself up about it ever since. You'll have to let it go sometime."

"That's _impossible_, Jazz. Even if I were to somehow agree that I'm not responsible for all of your deaths, thousands of innocent people have died at my hands. You don't just walk away from that."

"But—" Jazz hesitated, then stopped, much to the original Danny's surprise. "You're not ready to hear this. We can talk about it another time."

Strike groaned a little from the floor and stirred. Danny noticed her hair was white and there were wrinkles around her eyes. The other Danny went and knelt beside her.

"Will she be all right?" Jazz asked anxiously.

"I don't think he hit her that hard," the copy replied. He put a hand under Strike's head as her eyes blinked open. "How do you feel?" he asked.

Strike focused on him. Immediately she lunged sideways, pushing his helping hands away. "Don't touch me," she snapped.

Hurt, disappointment and then resignation chased across the copy's face so fast Danny almost missed all three emotions. If it hadn't been on someone whose facial expressions were so close to his own he might not have seen them at all. He knew Sam had seen too, however, because she took his hand and squeezed ever so slightly.

Strike and the copy stared at each other, unmoving and expressionless for a moment longer. Then Sam cleared her throat. "Um, how are you feeling, Strike?"

"I'll be back to normal in a minute or two," she replied. Already her hair was rapidly gaining strands of red and the wrinkles at her eyes were gone. "Looks like your cousin arrived in the nick of time."

"How—" Tucker started.

"I see the past and present, Mr. Foley," Strike reminded him. "I already saw the whole fight even though I was out cold. Not a bad job on the whole. And we have the evil half imprisoned in a Fenton Thermos. Not exactly the way I had hoped things would work out, but overall I think my work here is done."

"Wait, you're going?" Jazz asked. "Just like that?"

"Well, you're all safe again, aren't you? My job was to make sure the Plasmius-Phantom hybrid didn't become the only version of Danny Phantom in this time stream. With the evil part of the hybrid neutralized and the Fenton Ghost Catcher destroyed I think the chances of that happening are pretty slim, though I'll need to consult with Da—Clockwork—to confirm it. With one or two loose ends tied up, I'll be on my way."

"Loose ends?" asked Danny, handing her the Thermos with the evil Vlad-copy inside. He was sorry to see Strike go. She could be prickly, but she wasn't entirely unpleasant, and having her around was reassuring. It was certainly easier to catch ghosts with her ability to stop time. But she had said her job was different from theirs and they'd been given different tools. He certainly didn't want to give up Sam, Tucker, Jazz and his parents for the ability to start and stop time.

Strike looked at the copy, her face hard. "Give me your part of the Time Medallion. You should have it on you somewhere."

"And risk popping out of existence?" he demanded. "No, thanks."

"You won't, as long as _he_ has _his_." Strike shook the Fenton Thermos.

With a roll of his eyes, the copy reached into the front of his white jumpsuit. He frowned, felt around a little bit more, then extracted his hand. "I can't get it."

"Excuse me?" Strike's voice was icy cold.

"It's intangible, and I don't seem to be able to get it back. I think I'd need to be fused with my other half to have enough power."

Strike growled under her breath. "Let me try something." She pushed the button on her staff. The Danny-copy's movements slowed down in to an almost exaggerated degree, like in a movie scene in slow-motion.

"If he were running he'd look like a failed tryout for Chariots of Fire," Tucker chuckled.

"You're the only one that's seen that movie, Tucker," Sam reminded him.

"Oh. Right."

Strike pushed the button again and things returned to normal. "Looks like the split also split the power of the Time Medallion, so my powers can affect you to a degree. I think it's safe enough to leave the Medallion with you. I don't want anyone that's immune to time-manipulation powers floating around." She paused. "Not that I think you'll abuse the privilege."

"Thanks." There was no sarcasm to the Danny-copy's tone.

Strike actually tilted her head as if curious about the copy's lack of emotion. Then she shrugged slightly. "Well, Danny, say goodbye to your parents for me. For human ghost-hunters, they're all right." She spun her staff, and a portal to the Ghost Zone appeared in the air.

"Thank you for everything, Strike," Danny said formally. "You saved our lives." He grinned. " And for a ghost time cop, you're not so bad yourself."

Strike's mouth quirked. "Keep doing your job, Phantom. You and your team. You're good at it. With luck, you won't see me again." She saluted Sam, Tucker and Jazz, managed a reluctant nod to Danny's older copy, and went through the portal.

"I hope she takes some time to recover at Clockwork's tower," remarked the copy. "She's really drained; she just hides it well."

"You like her, don't you?" Sam said, crossing her arms.

"I—no!" The copy looked uncomfortable. "I respect her, that's all. She's a good…opponent. She's smart, and resourceful, and—"

"And you _don't_ have a crush on her. Riiiight." Sam grinned, raising an eyebrow. "Don't try to lie—we know _all_ the signs." She and Danny smiled at each other.

"All right, fine. I…I like her. But it would never work. You saw." The copy's worldly-weariness had returned. "She wants nothing to do with me. This part of me, the good part, has liked her ever since we first met—well, fought—years ago. But there was no way for me to show it. All she saw was the other side, the side that wanted to destroy anything that reminded him of being happy. You saw him earlier—he went for her and not anyone that would help him get back into the timeline."

Danny nodded. The hints that his other self had a history with Strike had finally been confirmed. It was odd that an older version of him would have a crush on the imperturbable time cop, though he had just admitted to himself she had likeable qualities. Even more odd that the crush would be buried for years in his cruel and violent hybrid.

"And I certainly don't blame her. After all these years…" The copy closed his eyes. "I gave her that scar on her face. I remember doing it. And she remembers _everything_—she can't forget. I doubt she'll forgive me for that."

Jazz looked like she wanted to say something but thought better of it.

"Look, we're all exhausted," Sam said suddenly. "It's been a…really weird day to say the least, even by our usual standards. Why don't we all go downstairs and have some lunch? There's no point in talking about anything serious when none of us can think straight."

"Thanks, Sam, but I'm full-ghost. I don't eat," the other Danny reminded her.

"You can still hang out with us for a little while in the kitchen," Sam retorted. "What else are you going to do?"

She had him there, it was obvious. The white-haired ghost looked taken aback for a moment. Then he actually grinned. "You always win, don't you?"

"Always," Sam said just as Danny said, "Not always." Tucker and Jazz both snorted. The tension in the room broke a little. Somehow, like Danielle and Strike, the Danny-copy was tentatively a member of the group for as long as he chose to stay.

"So…one thing before we go down," Tucker put in tentatively. "What should we call you? We can't exactly call you 'Danny.' Things are bad enough with Dani-with-an-i downstairs."

"Good point, Tucker," Jazz agreed. "We have to have a way of distinguishing you now that you have a personality of your own."

Everyone in the room frantically wracked their brains, if their expressions were any indication. The copy seemed the most stumped.

"What did they call you during the ten years you were fused with Vlad?" Jazz asked curiously.

"Phantom, if they called me anything," the other responded. His mouth twisted grimly. "Mostly they just screamed and ran. Or stood to fight."

"What did you call yourself?" Jazz continued.

"Huh?" She'd startled him.

"What did you _think_ your name was? Hypothetically, if somebody had gotten close enough to ask what your name was and you had actually answered, what would you have said?"

The copy scratched his head. "I have no idea. The thought never crossed my mind."

Danny could see Jazz taking mental notes. She was probably already preparing some psychological profile of the ghost in her mind.

"Dante," said Sam suddenly.

"What?" Everyone turned to look at her.

"Dante," she repeated. "That's what we should call you."

"Why Dante?" Jazz wanted to know. The copy himself did not say anything, but he looked thoughtful.

Sam ticked her points off on her fingers. "First of all, it sounds close enough to 'Danny' that the connection's still there. Second, it's like, you know, Dante's Inferno."

"Huh?" Danny and Tucker said.

To Jazz the reference seemed to make sense. She nodded approvingly.

"Either of you care to explain?" Danny wanted to know.

"Dante. The Italian Renaissance writer," Sam said.

"Is this something else I should have picked up in school and slept through?" Danny asked.

"Probably, though for me this is a Goth thing," Sam said smugly. "Darkness and damnation and stuff. Dante's Inferno is part of an epic poem the guy wrote about his journey—"

"…through Hell and back," the copy finished for her.

"How do _you_ know that?" Danny demanded.

"Vlad Masters almost made it through college until the accident that gave him his ghost powers landed him in the hospital," the other pointed out. "I have his memories as well as yours."

"So, what do you think?" Sam asked.

"Of the name? It's growing on me." Dante gave a small smile and crossed his arms. "I'll try it on for size."

"If that's settled, can we go downstairs and eat?" asked Tucker plaintively. "I smell meat. All-beef hot dogs, to be precise."

"There better be tofu dogs to go with them," Sam remarked.

At this they all laughed, and clattered downstairs, leaving the smoking remains of Danny's room behind to be dealt with later.

* * *

_Author's Note: About Dante. Many thanks to Cywyllog for helping me to figure out what to call him; the reasoning was basically what Sam gives in the fic. I hope I've been able to keep everyone straight between Danny, Dani, the Danny/Vlad hybrid (aka Dark Danny or Dan Plasmius or Dan Phantom, depending on who you ask), and the mostly-Danny (now Dante) and mostly-Vlad splits of the hybrid. It was tough and sometimes ponderous to write it all out, but I hope I was successful. With any luck it should be smoother sailing from now on as far as names as I wrap this thing up._

_If anyone has suggestions as to what to call the Vlad half of the split, I will happily take them into consideration. Frankly, I'm stumped._


	14. The Laws of the Universe

**Chapter 14: The Laws of the Universe**

_Disclaimer: I do not own Danny Phantom or its characters. Dante and Strike belong to me._

There were hot dogs, and tofu dogs. The little group found Danielle and Jack happily chowing down in the kitchen, Danielle in her human rather than ghost form. Maddie was cooking more hot dogs on the stove while she and Jack had a cheerful argument—around the hot dogs in Jack's mouth—about which of their weapons had worked best in their fight.

"I'm telling you, the Fenton Ghost-Eliminator was—oh, hi kids," Maddie broke off when they entered. Somehow she included Dante in this statement, which was both amusing and weird to Danny. She peered behind the group. "Is Strike all right?"

"Oh, yeah," Danny assured her quickly before Dante could say anything. "She woke up and headed back to the Ghost Zone to finish recuperating."

"That's great, hon. I was sure she'd be fine, but you never know with ghosts, strange things that they are. Although for a ghost she's not so bad."

"She said almost the same thing about you and Dad," said Danny.

"That we're all right for ghosts?" Jack demanded. "We aren't ghosts, we're ghost-hunters! The nerve! And after we helped her, too!"

"No, no," soothed Danny. "She just said for human ghost-hunters you're all right. Apparently most ghosts don't take kindly to being hunted."

"No kidding," murmured Danielle, who had been through her share of being the ghost-prey.

This was lost on Jack and Maddie, however. "Well, why shouldn't we hunt them?" Maddie demanded. "There's a Ghost Zone for a reason! Ghosts that are hostile to humans should stay there!"

"Would make our lives a little easier," Danny admitted. "But then I think we'd be out of a job."

"Hmmm," Maddie agreed thoughtfully. Danny, Sam, Tucker and Jazz, used to short-lived debates like this around meals at the Fenton home, settled down to hot dogs and tofu dogs. Dante stood awkwardly wedged in a corner. Though he didn't take up as much physical room as Danny or Jack, he clearly felt as though he did not fit.

It was Dani who finally did something about it. "Sit," she said in her imperious way, pushing a chair out with her foot. "Even if you don't eat, tell me you can at least sit. Right?" She grinned broadly at him.

It was hard not to be charmed when his "cousin" was being sassy, Danny reflected. At least Dante took the offered chair. He still didn't talk, but he seemed to be listening with genuine interest to Danielle's stories of her exploits since she had last seen the Fentons. Danny didn't believe half of the things the young teen said, but that wasn't the point. Danielle enjoyed being the center of attention, and Danny was perfectly happy to let her have the spotlight. She kept the mood in the kitchen light seemingly without effort. Everyone else appeared nothing but grateful to have her distract them.

No one mentioned the events of the last few days.

The phone rang. They all jumped, including Dante. No one seemed to know what to do. This unexpected wake-up call from the outside world was slowly reminding them that real life had continued to march on without them, completely unaware of how close it had come to destruction. Finally, Maddie, who happened to be closest to the phone, reached up and answered it.

"Hello, FentonWorks. Oh, hi Mr. Lancer!"

"Oh, no, graduation!" Tucker, Sam and Danny all exclaimed simultaneously.

"Tomorrow?" Maddie said, ignoring the sudden commotion around her. "Yes, of course we'll be there! We're all so looking forward to hearing Danny's speech." A pause. "Why would you think we couldn't make it?" A longer pause, during which Danny and Sam looked at each other. "No, no, everything's fine. We'll be there." Another pause. Maddie's face lost a little color. "The Shield?"

"Great galloping ghosts, we forgot!" exclaimed Jack.

"Jazz, did you kids find anything at Vlad's old castle to help us?" Maddie asked with one hand over the phone's receiver.

"No, Mom," Jazz admitted.

"But I don't think we don't have to worry about Plasmius this time, either," Danny said.

Maddie gave him a look, and her son mouthed 'Later.' She nodded. "Yes, don't worry about the Ghost Shield. Right. See you tomorrow!" She hung up.

"All right, young man, _why_ exactly do we not have to worry about Vlad tomorrow?" she demanded.

"I didn't do anything!" Danny protested.

"I did," Dante said, speaking for the first time since coming downstairs. "And unless Clockwork or Strike do something about him before tomorrow, which for your sakes I hope they don't, Plasmius won't be giving you any trouble."

"Strike mentioned something about dinosaurs?" Tucker asked tentatively.

"She wasn't kidding," replied Dante. He looked as though he wasn't sure whether to be proud or embarrassed.

"Really?" Danielle leaned forward eagerly. "Where exactly did you send him? And how?"

"Clockwork has a device that lets him view or visit any place or time he chooses. I sent Plasmius back somewhere in the vicinity of the Jurassic. I couldn't destroy him without endangering the part of me that belongs to him, but I needed him out of my way and out of my hair until I could get rid of him later. It was the most convenient thing at the time."

"Cool!" Dani grinned fiercely. "I hope he stays there for a long, long time. And I hope when he does come back he's got a few teeth marks in him."

Since everyone in the room more or less agreed with this sentiment, no one said anything. At last Dante cleared his throat. "Did I hear something about a speech at this graduation thing?"

Danny felt his cheeks go brick red. Jazz said proudly, "Danny's the elected class speaker."

"Awesome, Danny!" congratulated Danielle. "Now I'm glad I'll actually get to hear this thing!"

"I just hope it doesn't get interrupted again or we'll _never_ be free of Casper High," Danny grumbled.

"I just hope we can get the Ghost Shield up and running again before tomorrow," Maddie said worriedly.

"Don't bother," said Dante with quiet firmness in his voice.

"What?" Everyone but Danny and Danielle looked at him with varying amounts of wariness. Manifestation of good or not, he was still a relatively unknown entity.

Dante ducked his head, looking for a moment like the original Danny at his most shy. "I mean, you can fix it eventually. But don't worry about having it ready by tomorrow." He and Danielle exchanged glances. Dani grinned and nodded slightly; Danny realized that on some strange level the pair of them had reached an unspoken understanding.

"Yeah," Dani agreed with Dante. "We'll make sure nobody unwanted interrupts." The way she said it made Danny actually feel sorry for any hostile ghost that showed up.

Dante now looked straight at Danny. His bright green eyes were steady and determined. Danny recognized the look; it was his own at his most resolved. "It's the least I can do," the older ghost said.

"And afterwards?" Danny heard himself asking. He hadn't even realized he'd had the thought until it popped out of his mouth.

Dante shrugged. His eyes were weary again, and somehow older than the thirty years his appearance gave him. "Who knows?"

-0-0-0-

Considering everything, Mr. Lancer took the news that they were risking going without a Ghost Shield for Graduation Take Two surprisingly well. He only asked Danny if he was sure. Danny nodded. He trusted Danielle and Dante to do what they had promised.

Lancer narrowed his eyes, clearly unsure but to Danny's relief did not argue. Danny had explained to Lancer how the situation with the evil version of himself had been resolved. Lancer had only swallowed it because after three years he knew Danny wouldn't lie to him about something this important. The potbellied teacher mostly seemed relieved that he wasn't in imminent danger anymore, no matter how crazy the story behind it.

Graduation Take Two began for the most part exactly identical to Take One. Danny's stubborn tassel kept smacking him in the face. The Fentons made a great deal of noise when he entered the stadium, compounded this time with whistles from Dani Phantom. Lancer made the exact same opening speech. The only major differences were the lack of glowing green Shield overhead, and that Danny had a Fenton Thermos strapped to his waist under his gown. Just in case.

Neither Dante nor Danielle was in sight for the majority of the ceremony. Neither was there any trace of ghosts trying to interrupt. However, when he stepped up to make his speech, Danny did see Danielle perched atop the tallest tree visible from the stadium. She waved at him. Even from a distance he could see her huge grin. Danny grinned back. Let everyone else think he was smiling at them.

He started his speech. "As most of you know, I'm Danny Fenton…" He continued the speech as originally written. He even managed a few lame jokes, which made his audience chuckle or groan depending on how well they knew their town hero's personality.

In the end, however, he paused. He knew Lancer would frown at him later, but he deviated from his notes.

"As we all go our separate ways and meet people outside of Amity Park, I'd like to make a personal request. Just remember people aren't always how they first appear." He chuckled. "I think I'm living proof of that."

The audience stirred in what might have been a laugh—or an uncomfortable rustle.

"Not that every nerd you pick on will turn out to be a superhero in disguise. But you never know. My point is, give people a chance before you decide you know what they're like just by looking at them."

He paused to let that sink in. Then he grinned and threw his arms wide. "Hey, enough with the serious stuff. Today we get to celebrate that we made it out of high school alive!" With that, he transformed into Danny Phantom, flew out over the crowd, and sent a few ectoplasmic bursts from his fingers in the shape of fireworks.

Everyone erupted into cheers. Although it was premature, many students took off their caps and threw them. The Fentons happily blew their noisemakers. Lancer shouting on the bullhorn couldn't quell the noise. The only ones not happy were Sam's parents, who of course looked scandalized at the unseemly behavior going on around them. Even Tucker's parents, normally as reserved as the Mansons, were cheering with the rest. Danny glimpsed Dani fist pumping the air from her tree.

And off in the shadows of the bleachers, a small smile from Dante, and a wave of a black-gloved hand.

Danny thought he knew what that meant.

It took twenty minutes for everyone to realize that they had to calm down if the graduates actually wanted to get their hands on their diplomas. The rest of the ceremony proceeded from there, if in a haphazard sort of way and not at all the way rehearsal had gone. In the end everyone did get their diplomas. That, as Sam commented later, was all that really counted, Lancer's grousing about tradition aside.

Dani Phantom met them after the ceremony. The Fentons were the last to leave, as everyone seemed to want a picture with famous Danny Phantom. Thus it was early evening by the time only the Fentons, Tucker and Jazz stood by the Family Assault Vehicle.

"Hey, where's Dante?" asked Tucker.

"Oh, he left awhile ago," Dani said, confirming Danny's suspicions.

"He left?" Maddie seemed a little taken aback. "Didn't he want to stay with us for a little while?"

"He said you'd say that," Dani admitted. She shrugged. "He also said to tell you it's very kind of you to offer, but it's too hard for him. He's not Danny Phantom or Vlad Plasmius. He has to figure out his own life."

"Everyone has to find their own place in the world," agreed Jazz. "All he'd do here is wallow in the past, which is not good for anyone's psychological health. Even ghosts. It's my personal theory that that's why so many of them turn bad."

"Well." Maddie looked somewhat affronted, but seemed to accept Jazz's explanation if not the one Dante himself had given. "If that's how he wants it to be."

"Did he say where he was going?" asked Sam.

"Nah. Went all mysterious." Dani grinned. "Which I totally get. Sometimes it's nice to just be out on your own." She floated a few feet above the ground. "Are we going back to your place soon? I can't wait to taste the cake the Mansons ordered. It's got six layers, and—"

"Yep, she's definitely got some Fenton in her," Sam whispered to Danny.

"Not really what I want to think about right now," Danny whispered back. "I just want to celebrate." But he couldn't help glancing behind him at the bleachers where he had last seen Dante.

Sam noticed. She smiled, a little smile that just crooked one corner of her mouth. "Laws of the universe," she said.

"Huh?" Danny looked at her.

"Remember what Clockwork said? His 'guidelines' for the universe?"

"Sure. He said when there's two of one thing in the same universe at the same time, then they'll keep meeting until one of them…" he paused, "…destroys the other. You don't think—"

"No," Sam said. "I don't think you're eventually going to have to kill the other version of you, any more than you've been forced to kill Dani these past three years. But she keeps turning up, doesn't she?"

"She has to, to not melt into ectoplasmic goo," Danny reminded her.

"Yeah, but not this time. She turned up anyway right when we needed her. I think it may be the same with Dante. You share enough, I dunno, _stuff_, that your paths will just continue to cross. He may not be your future anymore, but I think…he's inevitable."

"And the other version? The evil one?"

"Him, too." Sam looked like she hoped she was wrong about that. Danny agreed with her—he did not want to lay eyes on that twisted version of himself and Plasmius again. Even a brief glimpse was enough. But he had a feeling Sam was right. The laws of the universe would conspire to keep his life intertwined with Dante and Dante's evil opposite no matter how they tried to avoid it. This wasn't all bad—he'd like to occasionally see Dante now that he didn't have to worry about this incarnation of himself going off on a horrible killing spree. But if he got to see Dante, that meant he'd eventually get to see the other side, too. And when that day came, he and his friends and family would have to be ready.

And in the meantime, college. With problems all its own.

"Hey, earth to Danny and Sam!" called Dani's voice. "We're waiting on you two!" The pair turned to find everyone else had piled into the Assault Vehicle to return to FentonWorks and the party all three families were having to honor the graduates.

"All right, all right, we're coming!" Sam yelled back. "C'mon, Danny. You were right today—enough with the serious stuff. Let's go be kids one more time. The laws of the universe can wait."

She grabbed his hand. They held eyes for one more serious moment. Then they both grinned simultaneously. Danny swept Sam up into his arms and took off.

"We're going to eat all the cake before the rest of you get there!" Danny taunted as they sped past the Assault Vehicle.

"Hey, no fair!" Dani went ghost and streaked after them. Danny and Sam just laughed and enjoyed the summer breeze in their hair. What would happen, would happen. Right now was a time to celebrate not only their graduation, but their victory in pulling off another impossible feat and saving the world yet again.

Sam was right. The laws of the universe could wait.

The End

* * *

_Author's Note: So that's it. What did you think? I'm really pleased with how this story came out. Thanks very much to those of you who read and reviewed. And to Cywyllog, who preread all my chapters even though she's not very familiar with Danny Phantom. I'm relying on my readers to catch any discrepancies with in-universe stuff. And you have. Thank you._

_This is the first in a two-part story. Whether the second one will ever get written is up for debate. It's outlined vaguely, but it's not even named at this point. I hope someday I will get to it but that day will not be soon. In the meantime, I hope you enjoyed this little foray into "what-if" land._

_Thanks to everyone who read and reviewed! I really appreciate it._

_Over and out,_

_SamoaPhoenix9_


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